Weekly SSRN Tax Article Review And Roundup: Speck Reviews Osofsky's Wellness And The Tax Law

This week, Sloan Speck (Colorado; Google Scholar) reviews a new work by Leigh Osofsky (North Carolina; Google Scholar), Wellness and The Tax Law, 59 Ga. L. Rev. __ (2025).

There is little doubt that the U.S. tax system’s patchwork treatment of medical care yields significant inequities, many of which reproduce broader problems with non-tax public health policy in the United States. In Wellness and the Tax Law, Leigh Osofsky explores these inequities as they arise in the context of individuals’ spending on wellness practices that foster physical and mental well-being. Medical research shows that these wellness practices are significantly correlated with preventing, mitigating, and treating identifiable health problems, with potential savings at both the individual and societal levels. Concomitantly, tax law has deployed the concept of “medical care” in more contexts, and with less consistency. Within this dynamic context, Osofsky revisits the structure and justifications for tax benefits for health-oriented spending.

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Weekly Legal Education Roundup

• AALS, Statements Of Good Practices For Faculty Recruitment, Hiring, Retention, And Resignation
• Chronicle of Higher Education Op-Ed (Alan Levinovitz), Are Colleges Getting Disability Accommodations All Wrong?
• Paul Caron (Dean, Pepperdine), The Great Unfinished Pepperdine Caruso Law Symphony
• Daily Business Review, Senior Partners Approach $3,000 an Hour, As More Billing Rate Hikes Expected in 2025
• Florida Bar, July 2024 Florida Bar Exam Results: For The First Time In Ten Years, Florida International Is Not #1
• Jewish News of Northern California, Architect of Israeli Judicial Coup Hounded Off Stage by Unusual Mix of Protesters at Berkeley
• David Lat (Original Jurisdiction), Asked And Answered: Should I Join FedSoc?

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Tax Policy In The Biden Administration

• Bloomberg, The Big Tax Hike Coming in Just Over a Year
• Bloomberg, Corporate Alternative Minimum Tax Rules Multiply Compliance Tasks
• Bloomberg, Countries Raise Corporate Tax Rates After Years of Decline
• Business Insider, How Rich Americans Use Life Insurance to Save on Taxes and Protect Their Kids' Inheritance With This Neat Trick
• Common Dreams, Dems Name and Shame Companies Paying Executives More Than They Pay in Federal Taxes

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Tobin Presents Have Your Cake And Eat It Too, An Apportioned Wealth Tax Today At Boston College

Donald Tobin (Maryland; Google Scholar) presents Have your Cake and Eat it Too, An Apportioned Wealth Tax at Boston College today as part of its Tax Policy Collaborative hosted by Diane Ring:

As economic inequality in the United States becomes more extreme, there are increased calls for raising taxes on the wealthiest Americans. Some proposals seek to tax the wealthy by taxing the increase in the value of capital assets or by taxing wealth. While Congress’s taxing power is extremely broad, opponents of these tax proposals argue that these proposals are unconstitutional and are not within Congress’ taxing power. These arguments rest on the notion that Congress’ taxing power is constrained by provisions in the Constitution requiring the apportionment of direct taxes. Opponents argue that a tax on the increase in the value of capital assets or on wealth is a direct tax and that classification of a tax as a direct tax either dooms its constitutionality (if it is not apportioned) or practicality (if it is).

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Speck: Zoom As An In-Person Learning Platform

Sloan Speck (Colorado; Google Scholar), Zoom as an In-Person Learning Platform, 99 N.D. L. Rev. 627 (2024):

During the COVID-19 pandemic, an unprecedented shift to remote learning spurred many legal educators to reassess their pedagogical norms and practices. These reassessments were enabled, in part, by the widespread adoption and acceptance of videoconferencing software, most notably Zoom, that accelerated from March of 2020. Zoom's catalytic effect on pedagogy belies the fact that no single aspect of Zoom, by itself, is particularly pathbreaking. What is revolutionary, however, is how Zoom bundles diverse functionalities into a coherent package.

By recasting Zoom as a bundle of classroom functionalities—as an in-person learning platform—this Article presents a novel use case for Zoom in legal education, distinct from the software's role in remote synchronous instruction.

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Next Week’s Tax Workshops

Tuesday, October 8: Diane M. Ring (Boston College; Google Scholar) will present The Conflictual Core of Global Tax Corporation (with Shu-Yi Oei (Duke; Google Scholar)) as part of the UC-Irvine Current Issues in Tax Law & Policy Colloquium Speaker Series. If you would like to attend, please RSVP here. 

Tuesday, October 8: Manasi Deshpande (Chicago) will present The (Lack of) Anticipatory Effects of the Social Safety Net on Human Capital Investment (with Rebecca Dizon-Ross (Chicago; Google Scholar)) as part of the NYU Tax Policy and Public Finance Colloquium. If you would like to attend, please contact Daniel Shaviro. 

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Schaffa: Reimagining The Deduction For Employee Compensation

Daniel Schaffa (Richmond; Google Scholar), Reimagining the Deduction for Employee Compensation, 57 U. Mich. J.L. Reform 417 (2024): 

U.S. businesses pay trillions of dollars in employee compensation, a substantial fraction of which is deductible for tax purposes. This deduction reduces the taxable income of businesses, ultimately lowering business tax burdens by hundreds of billions of dollars. With a few exceptions, the tax code confers the same deduction to a business for every dollar of employee compensation, regardless of whether that compensation goes to an employee earning millions or an employee earning minimum wage. This is consistent with a pure Haig-Simons income tax, under which any business expense incurred ought to be deductible dollar-for-dollar. But many, if not most, tax policy objectives are inconsistent with a pure income tax, and the U.S. tax code is accordingly replete with substantial deviations from a pure income tax.

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2025 Hourly Billing Rates For Elite Law Firms: $3,000 For Senior Partners, $1,000 For First Year Associates

Daily Business Review, Senior Partners Approach $3,000 an Hour, As More Billing Rate Hikes Expected in 2025:

Some Am Law 50 firms will increase billing rates substantially in 2025, with expectations that some senior partners will approach $3,000 an hour and more associates will bill over $1,000 an hour. ...

According to data from Valeo Partners, which analyzes public disclosure documents to discern upcoming rate changes, senior partners at "a few firms" will have standard rates approaching $3,000, and a few might exceed that marker. ...

For associates, rate increases will be more notable among third-years. Currently, 16 of the Am Law 50 firms have third-year associates with rates over $1,000, but Valeo projects around half of the Am Law 50 to have rates of over $1,000 amongst this group by 2025.

Billing rates for first-year associates are approaching $1,000 at a handful of firms, with Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison charging a minimum of $895 for associates in 2024, bankruptcy records show. Sullivan & Cromwell charges nearly as much—$850 hourly—for first-years.

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Section 1031 Offramps: Incentives For Small Investors To Sell Single-Family Rental Homes

Jack Wroldsen (Cal Poly), 1031 Offramps: Incentives for Small Investors to Sell Single-Family Rental Homes, 27 N.Y.U. J. Legis. & Pub. Pol'y ___ (2025): 

It has never been so expensive to purchase a single-family home. Multiple interrelated causes headline the affordability crisis, such as historically low interest rates that suddenly spiked higher, ongoing population growth, a decade of historic underbuilding of starter homes after the Great Recession, and Wall Street's unprecedented new business model of purchasing single-family rental homes (SFRs) in concentrated areas across the country.

Yet, while those contributing causes fluctuate over time, a more structural and long-lasting factor has remained unexamined in the current crisis: the lock-in effect that arises from Section 1031 of the Internal Revenue Code. The 1031 lock-in powerfully impacts the single-family home market because, on the one hand, Section 1031 incentivizes investors to buy SFRs, and, on the other hand, it strongly disincentivizes investors from selling SFRs before death.

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Critics Say Cutting 'Race And Ethnicity' From ABA Law School Diversity Accreditation Standard Goes Too Far

Reuters, Cutting 'Race and Ethnicity' From ABA's Law School Diversity Rules Goes Too Far, Critics Say:

Eliminating the terms “race and ethnicity” from the American Bar Association’s law school accreditation rules will hobble longstanding efforts to bring in diverse students and faculty, critics warned in public comments on the proposal.

Among the groups opposing a proposed revision of what is currently called the ABA's “diversity and inclusion” standard are legal education heavyweights including the Law School Admission Council; the Society of American Law Teachers; the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund; and a coalition of 44 law school deans.

The ABA, which sets accreditation standards for 197 law schools in the U.S., currently requires law schools to provide “full opportunities” for “racial and ethnic minorities” and have a diverse student body “with respect to gender, race, and ethnicity.”

The proposed new standard—renamed the “access to legal education and the profession” standard—eliminates references to race, ethnicity and gender and instead requires law schools to provide access to “persons including those with identities that historically have been disadvantaged or excluded from the legal profession.” ...

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Chodorow: Saban, Pope, And The Benefits Theory Of Taxation

Adam Chodorow (Arizona State; Google Scholar), Saban, Pope, and the Benefits Theory of Taxation: 

As a condition for receiving federal highway funding, Congress requires states to spend the revenues they raise from road users on the roads. Congress justified this condition, in part, because wanted federal money to supplement—not replace—state money and, in part, on fairness grounds, essentially endorsing the benefits theory of taxation, under which taxes can be justified based on the benefits taxpayers receive. To safeguard these federal funds and prevent legislatures from using road use revenues for other purposes, most states added anti-diversion provisions to their constitutions. A majority specifically identified the taxes their anti-diversion provisions would cover. However, a few—including Ohio and Arizona—adopted broad language providing that revenues from “fees, excises, or license taxes relating to registration, operation, or use of vehicles on the public highways or streets” be spent on the roads.

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BYU Law School Dean Contributed To Project 2025 — And Then Later Had His Name Removed

Salt Lake City Tribune, BYU Law School Dean Contributed to Project 2025 — and Then Later Had His Name Removed:

The dean of Brigham Young University’s law school, David Moore, was listed as a contributor on Project 2025 until earlier this summer, when Moore asked to have his name removed from the controversial blueprint created in the event former President Donald Trump is elected to a second term.

Lynnett Rands, dean of communications at BYU’s J. Reuben Clark Law School, said Moore was asked in 2022 to share his insights with The Heritage Foundation, which created Project 2025, because of his experience working for the U.S. Agency for International Development. Moore was the acting deputy administrator and general counsel at USAID from 2017 to 2019.

“He did not do so on behalf of Brigham Young University,” Rands said of the dean. “As such, Moore, after becoming dean of the law school, asked that his name not be included, in accordance with BYU’s political neutrality policy.”

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García: Taxing Collusion

Kristelia García (Georgetown; Google Scholar), Taxing Collusion (JOTWELL) (reviewing Rachel Landy (Cardozo), Downstreaming, 65 B.C. L. Rev. __ (2024)): 

Commentators have long raised the alarm about over-consolidation in the entertainment industries and the resulting barriers to entry seen in the downstream market. One line of scholarship identifies copyright law as a lever that policymakers might use to promote new entry into the copyright industries. Another looks to antitrust law to alternately break up, or prevent, over-consolidation. Some scholars have suggested utilizing both copyright and antitrust. Still others, myself among them, have expressed skepticism in the ability of either copyright or antitrust to effectively remedy the problem, and instead hope to borrow regulatory ideas from other contexts.

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Law Firm Reactions To Campus Protests May Chill DEI Efforts

Law360, Law Firm Reactions To Campus Protests May Chill DEI Efforts:

Nearly a year has passed since university campus protests began over a devastating humanitarian crisis in Gaza, and the reaction of law firms may be unintentionally creating a chilling effect on diversity in the legal field.

Last fall, several of the nation's most prestigious law firms sent a letter to law school deans expressing concerns over campuswide protests and sentiments related to the ongoing conflict, and some firms rescinded job offers from Ivy League students who expressed critical views of Israel following the events of Oct. 7, 2023.

In July of this year, Joseph C. Shenker, senior chair of Sullivan & Cromwell LLP, seemed to suggest in an interview with The New York Times that involvement in protests related to Palestine or Gaza, whether on campus or off, might be considered a factor in evaluating candidates.

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Haneman: Taxing Dirty Luxuries

Victoria J. Haneman (Creighton; Google Scholar), Taxing Dirty Luxuries, 56 Case W. Res. J. Int’l L. 197 (2024):

Dirty luxuries are items that are pleasant or nice to have, not necessities, that absolutely bludgeon the environment. From the merely affluent to the ultra-rich, consumers enjoying dirty luxuries, such as luxury clothing, private jets, superyachts, SUVs, and vacation cruises, drive one of the most polluting types of consumption on the planet. This Article explores the climate costs of dirty luxuries, considers the current and proposed international efforts to address the climate impact of these luxuries, and proposes structures by which these luxuries may be taxed to either reduce consumption or compensate for negative externalities.

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AALS Statements Of Good Practices For Faculty Recruitment, Hiring, Retention, And Resignation

The AALS has adopted these Statements of Good Practices for AALS membership, law faculty and other law school practices:

• Recruitment and Hiring of Entry-Level Faculty Members [Amended May 11, 2023]
• Recruitment and Retention of Minority Law Faculty Members [Amended May 11, 2023]
• Recruitment of and Resignation by Full-time Faculty Members [Amended February 25, 2019]
• Law Professors in the Discharge of Their Ethical and Professional Responsibilities [Amended May 24, 2024]

Brian Leiter (Chicago), The New Timetable of the Law School Hiring Market:

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LSU Seeks To Hire A Clinical Tax Prof

LSU Law, Faculty Posting: 

The LSU Paul M. Hebert Law Center seeks to hire a faculty member to develop, implement, teach, and serve as director for our new Low Income Taxpayer Clinic (“LITC”). The position will be a twelve-month appointment with the possibility of renewal. The LITC will be a new offering in our robust clinical program. The LITC Clinic will serve low income taxpayers in a variety of disputes with the Internal Revenue Service. 

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California Bar Examiners Endorse Switch To Kaplan Exam; Ball Is Back In Supreme Court's Court

The Recorder, California Bar Examiners Endorse Switch to Kaplan Exam:

A state bar committee on Monday endorsed plans to use a Kaplan-written multiple choice test on the February 2025 bar exam, paving the way for the California Supreme Court to give the proposal a fresh review.

The 10-0 vote by the Committee of Bar Examiners authorizes state bar staff to resubmit a petition, with its members' imprimatur, that the high court rejected on Sept. 18. In a two-sentence docket entry, the justices said any request to switch test-writing vendors and to rely heavily on remote testing during future exams had to be "considered and approved" by the committee that oversees bar admissions and not just the bar's board of trustees.

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Lawsky Presents Limiting Languages For Tax Law Today At UC-San Francisco

Sarah Lawsky (Northwestern; Google Scholar) presents Limiting Languages for Tax Law at UC-San Francisco today as part of its 2024 Tax Speaker Series hosted by Heather Field:

Inconsistencies and contradictions play drastically different roles in law and in logic, respectively, and programming languages designed to code law should therefore, to the extent possible, be designed to prevent the encoding of inconsistencies. Programming languages should be limited not because such inconsistencies do not exist in the statute, but rather exactly because they do. Inconsistencies in the law should, as they are now, be addressed by Congress, the courts, and administrative agencies, and any computer code implementing the law should represent the law as detangled by the relevant branch of government. The article provides an example of a tax statute that mandates inconsistent outcomes for the same set of facts and shows how that inconsistency has been addressed by Treasury and the IRS. The article establishes the inconsistency in part by using an automated theorem prover. 

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Lat: Ambitious Law Students Must Choose To Be On ‘Team Blue’ Or ‘Team Red’

David Lat (Original Jurisdiction), Asked And Answered: Should I Join FedSoc?:

In this day and age, ambitious law students and young lawyers need to pick a ‘team’—which might be unfortunate, but is the reality.

Welcome to the latest installment of my advice column here at Original Jurisdiction, Asked and Answered. If you have a question for a future edition of A&A, please email me at davidlat at substack dot com, subject line “Asked and Answered: [your topic].”

With the new school year ramping up, today’s request for advice is timely:

Dear A&A,

I’m a 1L at a T14 law school, and I’m writing to ask for your thoughts on whether I, an originalism- and textualism-attracted individual, should join the Federalist Society, given (1) its already-existing reputation among the political left, (2) its seemingly evolving reputation among segments of the right, and (3) the general increase in political polarization and tensions on campuses. I want to join the Federalist Society, but I worry that joining may (1) alienate me from some classmates and (2) harm future job or clerkship prospects.

So what say you: Is FedSoc still the place to go for law students interested in originalism and textualism? Or have increased campus tensions and negative media stories on the Supreme Court and FedSoc sufficiently raised the downsides of joining that you would advise against it? I suspect similar questions may be on many 1L students’ minds right now. 

Sincerely yours,
Faint-hearted FedSoc-er ...

I believe that he should join FedSoc (emphasis mine)—unless there’s a good reason not to join, to which I now turn.

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Tax Expenditures And Horizontal Equity: A Present-Day Reassessment

Nir Fishbien (Michigan; Google Scholar), Tax Expenditures and Horizontal Equity: A Present-Day Reassessment, 28 Chap. L. Rev. ___ (2025):

Tax expenditures are “revenue losses attributable to provisions of the Federal tax laws which allow a special exclusion, exemption, or deduction from gross income or which provide a special credit, a preferential rate of tax, or a deferral of tax liability.” The concept of tax expenditures was coined by the first Assistant Secretary for Tax Policy, Stanley S. Surrey, in the late 1960s, and was codified by the Congressional Budget Act of 1974, which requires that a list of tax expenditures be included in the U.S. budget. The concept relies on the Haig-Simons definition of income (with certain adjustments) as the baseline, a deviation from which is considered a tax expenditure.

There are two basic problems with attempts to define tax expenditures against a Haig-Simons baseline. First, it is not clear why the Haig-Simons, and not other definitions of income, should be used as a baseline. Second, it is not clear why such deviations are normatively problematic. Put bluntly, who cares whether a specific tax provision is a deviation from some theoretical definition of income?

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Projected 2025-26 U.S. News Law School Rankings: 1-11

In May, I blogged Derek Muller's Projected 2025-26 U.S. News Law School Rankings for the Top 100 law schools. Last week, Mike Spivey published projected rankings for the Top 11 law schools. The table below shows the differences between the two models for the Top 11 schools:

Law School	2024-25 Rank	Muller Projected 2025-26 Rank	Spivey Projected 2025-26 Rank
Stanford	1	1	1
Yale	1	3	2
Chicago	3	2	3
Duke	4	7	7
Harvard	4	5	4
Penn	4	5	4
Virginia	4	3	4
Columbia	8	9	8
Michigan	9	7	8
Northwestern	9	9	8
NYU	9	9	8

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Queen's University Seeks To Hire An Entry Level Or Lateral Tax Prof

Queen's University Law, Tax Law Faculty Position: 

The Faculty of Law at Queen’s University invites applications for a tenure-track faculty position at the rank of Assistant Professor, or tenured faculty position at the rank of Associate Professor, with a specialization in Tax Law. The successful applicant will be the inaugural Faculty of Law Scholar in Tax Law.  

The Faculty of Law seeks scholars who are or have the potential to become nationally and internationally recognized for their work. Except in exceptional circumstances, the successful candidate will have a JD or equivalent and a graduate degree in law or within a cognate discipline. The main criteria for selection are academic and teaching excellence. The successful candidate will provide evidence of high-quality scholarly output that demonstrates a history of, and potential for independent research with a track record of peer assessed publications in top journals and the securing of external research funding, as well as strong potential for outstanding teaching contributions at both the JD/LLB and graduate levels, and an ongoing commitment to academic and pedagogical excellence in support of the Faculty of Law’s programs. Candidates must provide evidence of an ability to work collaboratively in an interdisciplinary and student-centred environment. The successful candidate will also be expected to make contributions through service to the Faculty, the University, and/or the broader community. Salary will be commensurate with qualifications and experience.

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Are Colleges (And Law Schools) Getting Disability Accommodations All Wrong?

Chronicle of Higher Education Op-Ed:  Are Colleges Getting Disability Accommodations All Wrong?, by Alan Levinovitz (James Madison; Google Scholar):

Disability accommodations in American higher education are skyrocketing. In the past decade, the proportion of colleges with more than 10 percent of students registered as disabled has quintupled, and accommodation requests have followed the same pattern. Despite increased staff and resources, disability-service providers are overwhelmed, and it’s common for a single staff member to be tasked with serving 500 students. Faculty are also reporting increased workloads as they find themselves continually adjusting teaching and assessment practices.

Providing an accessible education to everyone is a crucial civil-rights issue, one that went unaddressed in this country for far too long. Discrimination against people with disabilities was standard practice until the introduction of legal protections like Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act in 1973 and the Americans With Disabilities Act (ADA) in 1990. Without these protections, blind students would have no recourse if their community college failed to provide accessible versions of textbooks and library materials, and deaf students participating in online classes would not be entitled to closed-captioning. Even with robust laws in place, disabilities are frequently missed or dismissed, a problem compounded by racial and socioeconomic disparities.

Concern about the validity of surging accommodation requests may therefore seem misplaced. To a certain extent, the trend is a positive development: the product of increased awareness, better screening practices, and less institutional discrimination. We should worry about students’ rising rates of mental-health disorders, many disability advocates say, not the willingness of colleges to accommodate them.

However, a suite of acute, well-documented problems with disability accommodations demand attention. The data is clear, for instance, that a significant minority of diagnoses are fraudulent or mistaken. In many cases, there is no empirical basis for granting common accommodation requests like extended time or distraction-free testing. And there is further evidence that the current state of disability accommodation compounds inequities in student achievement, rather than alleviating them.

Students and instructors are rightfully concerned about fairness and compromised rigor. Resources are being misallocated to unproven interventions and students who don’t need them. Worst of all, the interventions may be harming some of the students they are intended to help, exacerbating their mental-health problems and setting them up for a lifetime of struggle.

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The 10 Most-Cited Tax Faculty

Following up on last month's post, The Most-Cited Tax Faculty At The 64 Most-Cited Law Schools:  Brian Leiter (Chicago) has updated his ranking of the Ten Most-Cited Tax Faculty to now cover the 2019-2023 period (see prior most-cited tax faculty rankings: 2000-2007, 2005-2010, 2009-2013, 2010-2014, 2013-2017, 2016-2020):

Rank	Name	School	Citations	Age
1	Reuven Avi-Yonah	Michigan	400	67
2	David Weisbach	Chicago	250	61
	Daniel Shaviro	NYU	250	67
4	Dorothy Brown	Georgetown	240	65
	Lawrence Zelenak	Duke	240	66
6	David Gamage	Missouri-Columbia	230	46
7	Darien Shanske	UC-Davis	220	50
8	Anne Alstott	Yale	200	61
9	Lily Batchelder	NYU	190	51
	Victor Fleischer	UC-Irvine	190	53

Leiter also lists five highly-cited scholars who work partly in tax:

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Legal Ed News Roundup

• ABA Journal, Assisting Native American and Indigenous Law Students Requires Confronting the Challenges They Face
• ABA Journal, Penn Law Prof Gets Half-Pay Suspension For ‘Discriminatory And Disparaging Statements’
• ABC News, University Imposes a One-Year Suspension on Law Professor Over Comments on Race
• Above the Law, Student Accepted To Top Law School With Full Ride Sentenced In January 6th Case
• Bloomberg Law, Monster Bid to Block Trademark Survives as Law School Rebuffed
• Daily Business Review, Ex-St. Thomas Univ. Law Professor Sues School Over Firing, Alleging Defamation
• Daily Caller, The Amy Wax Inflection Point For ‘Elite’ Higher Education
• Daily Report, Dean of Atlanta's John Marshall Law School Stepping Down After Four Years

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Bearer-Friend: Paying For Reparations—How To Capitalize A Multi-Trillion Reparations Fund

Jeremy Bearer-Friend (George Washington; Google Scholar), Paying for Reparations: How to Capitalize a Multi-Trillion Reparations Fund, 67 How. L.J. 1 (2024):

This Article proposes a novel approach to capitalizing a reparations fund worth trillions of dollars. Under the proposal, publicly-traded firms on U.S. exchanges would be required to remit shares of corporate equity to a reparations trust fund in lieu of cash tax payments. Under the terms of this proposal, our federal government could successfully capitalize a multi-trillion reparations fund in less than a year.

The primary contribution of this Article is to offer a unique financing structure for reparations—a national effort expected by all estimates to require trillions of dollars. The Article describes the features of the in-kind tax proposal, the myriad design choices that would be necessary to ensure effective implementation, and its analogs in the private sector for capitalizing a fund. The Article also evaluates the limitations of an in-kind tax proposal, ultimately concluding that in-kind remittance remains preferable to other tax policy options.

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Protesters Force UC-Berkeley FedSoc Event On Judicial Reform in Israel To Shift Online; Dean Chemerinsky To Pursue Disciplinary Action Against Disruptive Students

Update:  David Lat, Protesters Disrupt An Event At A Top Law School

Jewish News of Northern California, Architect of Israeli Judicial Coup Hounded Off Stage by Unusual Mix of Protesters at Berkeley:

Simcha Rothman, a member of Knesset and a key architect of the Israeli judicial coup, flew all the way to Northern California to drum up support for his contentious plan only to be driven off the stage within minutes by an unusual mix of Israeli and pro-Palestinian protesters.

Chairman of the Knesset Constitution, Law and Justice Committee, Rothman had been invited to present the plan at an event hosted Tuesday by the Federalist Society, a conservative legal organization, at Berkeley Law School. ...

The talk was titled “Restoring Democracy: The Debate Over Judicial Reform in Israel.” Rothman is a member of the far-right Religious Zionism party. ,,,

A representative of the law school opened the event by reciting a “civility statement” and emphasizing the importance of “respectful speech.” ...

Rothman was joined on the stage for a conversation with Joshua Kleinfeld, a professor of law at George Mason University and a member of the Federalist Society. ...

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WSJ: A Tax-Shelter Crackdown Uncovers A Dentist’s ‘Smile High Trust’

Wall Street Journal Tax Report, A Tax-Shelter Crackdown Uncovers a Dentist’s ‘Smile High Trust’:

Ryan Ulibarri, a family dentist in Fort Collins, Colo., is in tax trouble that could take a big bite of his time and money [Department of Justice Press Release].

In late August, a Denver grand jury indicted him on six criminal counts for using an “abusive-trust tax shelter” to hide more than $3.5 million of taxable income he earned from 2017 to 2022. He allegedly underpaid more than $1 million of tax over that period.

Now Ulibarri could go to prison for tax evasion, and he could also owe the Internal Revenue Service unpaid taxes plus interest and penalties. Ulibarri, who earlier this month pleaded not guilty to the government’s charges, declined to comment through his lawyer, Joshua Lowther of Lowther Walker. 

While most Americans aren’t in the market for tax shelters, the allegations in this case are a reminder of what can happen when taxpayers ignore professional advice and common sense on taxes. They also show how easy it can be for people who want to slash their taxes to delude themselves.

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July 2024 Florida Bar Exam Results: For The First Time In Ten Years, Florida International Is Not #1

The July 2024 Florida bar passage rates by school are out. For the first time in ten years, Florida International not is #1—they are #2 by 0.1 percentage point. Here are the results for the 12 Florida law schools, along with each school's U.S. News ranking (Florida and overall):

Bar Pass Rank (Rate)	School	US News Rank FL (Overall)
1 (90.6%)	Florida	1 (28)
2 (90.5%)	Florida Int'l	3 (68)
3 (87.4%)	Florida State	2 (48)
4 (85.1%)	Miami	4 (82)
5 (83.0%)	St. Thomas	7 (172)
6 (77.9%)	Stetson	5 (98)
7 (75.3%)	Barry	Tier 2
8 (71.6%)	Nova	Tier 2
9 (71.4%)	Ave Maria	6 (161)
10 (67.2%)	Florida A&M	Tier 2
11 (51.6%)	Thomas Cooley	Tier 2
12 (0.0%)	Florida Coastal	N/R

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TaxProf Blog Weekend Roundup

Saturday:

• Tax Whistleblowers Receive $74m Of $263m Recovery; IRS Plans 170% Increase In Whistleblower Office Staff
• King & Spalding Fights Bias Suit By Straight, White Female Over Summer Associate Diversity Fellowship Program
• This Week's Ten Most Popular TaxProf Blog Posts

Sunday:

• The Top Five New Tax Papers
• NY Times Op-Ed: A Princeton Professor’s Advice To Young Conservatives
• Trump Says He's Thinking More About God After Recent Assassination Attempts
• NY Times: In A First Among Christians, Young Men Are More Religious Than Young Women
• The Great Unfinished Pepperdine Caruso Law Symphony

The Great Unfinished Pepperdine Caruso Law Symphony

I had the honor of speaking at our annual Pepperdine Caruso Law School Dinner last Saturday night at the Fairmont Century Plaza in Los Angeles:

I previously blogged about the daily challenge I face Deaning While Stuttering. I am deeply grateful that my university and law school community continue to embrace me and overlook my shortcomings.

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NY Times: In A First Among Christians, Young Men Are More Religious Than Young Women

New York Times, In a First Among Christians, Young Men Are More Religious Than Young Women, by Ruth Graham:

At Grace Church in Waco, Texas, the Generation Z gender divide can be seen in the pews. It has the potential to reshape both politics and family life.

On a beautiful Sunday morning in early September, dozens of young men in Waco, Texas, started their day at Grace Church.

Men greeted visitors at the door, manned the information table and handed out bulletins. Four of the five musicians onstage were men. So was the pastor who delivered the sermon and most of the college students packing the first few rows.

“I’m so grateful for this church,” Ryan Amodei, 28, told the congregation before a second pastor, Buck Rogers, baptized him in a tank of water in the sanctuary.

Grace Church, a Southern Baptist congregation, has not made a conscious effort to attract young men. It is an unremarkable size, and is in many ways an ordinary evangelical church. Yet its leaders have noticed for several years now that young men outnumber young women in their pews. When the church opened a small outpost in the nearby town of Robinson last year, 12 of the 16 young people regularly attending were men.

“We’ve been talking about it from the beginning,” said Phil Barnes, a pastor at that congregation, Hope Church. “What’s the Lord doing? Why is he sending us all of these young men?”

The dynamics at Grace are a dramatic example of an emerging truth: For the first time in modern American history, young men are now more religious than their female peers. They attend services more often and are more likely to identify as religious.

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Trump Says He's Thinking More About God After Recent Assassination Attempts

The Christian Post, Trump Says He's Thinking More About God After Recent Assassination Attempts:

Former President Donald Trump suggested during a Wednesday appearance on Fox News' late-night show "Gutfeld!" that God allowed him to escape the two recent assassination attempts against him.

Making his first appearance on a broadcast or cable late-night show in an election cycle since 2016, Trump at first made light-hearted remarks with host Greg Gutfeld about the most recent attempt against his life on a golf course in Palm Beach, Florida. ...

The discussion took on a more serious tone as Trump reflected that being president is dangerous, especially if one's presidency is seen as "consequential."

"The only good thing is that it's always a consequential president that gets shot at, and fortunately so far, I've been very lucky," Trump said, adding, "Or [there is] something is greater than all of us."

"Something is up there; someone is up there, maybe watching over us," Trump said.

Gutfeld then asked Trump if his repeated brushes with death have led him to reflect more on God, mortality and the afterlife.

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NY Times Op-Ed: A Princeton Professor’s Advice To Young Conservatives

New York Times Op-Ed: A Princeton Professor’s Advice to Young Conservatives, by  Robert P. George (McCormick Professor of Jurisprudence, Princeton University; Nootbaar Honorary Distinguished Professor of Law, Pepperdine Caruso Law School; Google Scholar):

As a professor who is known to dissent from progressive ideologies that are dominant at universities such as Princeton, where I’ve taught for nearly 40 years, I’m frequently asked by students for advice about how to navigate a campus they worry will be hostile to them. Some are pro-Israel, or politically and socially conservative, or religiously observant.

They fear being treated unfairly by faculty members who are hostile to their beliefs. Many are afraid of being regarded as outcasts by their more liberal or progressive peers. They worry about being excluded from academic opportunities or not treated equitably in social or other extracurricular activities.

To these students I say, with regret: You’re right to worry. I’ve seen these things happen. ...

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The Top Five New Tax Papers

There is a bit of movement in this week's list of the Top 5 Recent Tax Paper Downloads, with a new paper debuting on the list at #2.

1. [870 Downloads]  Federal Tax Procedure (2024 Practitioner Ed.), by John Townsend (Houston; Google Scholar)
2. [656 Downloads]  What is Tax Fairness?, by Rita de la Feria (Leeds; Google Scholar)
3. [408 Downloads]  Tax Regulations After Loper Bright, by Andy Grewal (Iowa; Google Scholar)
4. [406 Downloads]  Reforming the Taxation of Life Insurance, by Ari Glogower (Northwestern; Google Scholar) & Andrew Granato (Yale; Google Scholar)
5. [387 Downloads]  Non-(Fully) Harmonised Excise Taxes and Irrebuttable Presumptions, by Rita de la Feria (Leeds; Google Scholar)

Editor's Note:  If you would like to receive a daily email with links to tax posts on TaxProf Blog, email me here.

This Week's Ten Most Popular TaxProf Blog Posts

Legal Education: 

1. New York Times, Penn Law Suspends Tenured Prof Amy Wax For One-Year With Half-Pay For Making Racist Remarks
2. Aaron Sibarium (Washington Free Beacon), How Penn Law Tried To Buy Amy Wax’s Silence
3. Jewish News of Northern California, UC-Berkeley Law Prof Targeted As ‘Zionist McCarthyist’ Outside Of His Antisemitism Course
4. Law360, George Mason Law School: $13m Budget Deficit In FY25 ($38m Over 6 Years); Dean Charged With Balancing Budget And Maintaining #28 U.S. News Ranking
5. Daily Business Review, Former Tenured Professor Sues St. Thomas College Of Law Again
6. ABA Journal, California Supreme Court Rejects State Bar's Plan For New Bar Exam
7. Law360, Blind Law Student Sues Wayne State For Failure To Accommodate Her Disability
8. U.S. News & World Report, 2025 U.S. News College Rankings
9. Chronicle of Higher Education, How Can Professors Learn Students’ Names?
10. Brian Leiter (Chicago), Federal Judge Grants Michigan Law School Summary Judgment In Professor's Discrimination Lawsuit

Tax:

1. Paul Caron (Dean, Pepperdine), Tax Policy In The Biden Administration 
2. Noah Hertz Marks (Duke), Winning By Losing—The Strategy Of Adverse Letter Rulings
3. ABA Tax Section, Virtual Fall Meeting
4. Andrew Hayashi (Virginia), Presentation of The Federal Architecture Of Income Inequality At NYU
5. New York Times, How Trump Could Upend Taxation In America
6. Kathleen DeLaney Thomas (North Carolina), Here’s How Harris’s Standard Business Deduction Could Work
7. Adam Rosenzweig (Washington University), BEPS—Endgame 
8. Paul Caron (Dean, Pepperdine), Next Week’s Tax Workshops
9. Sloan Speck (Colorado), Transforming Tax Expenditures
10. SSRN, The Top Five New Tax Papers

Faith

1. Fox News Op-Ed (Mike Kerrigan), What Bluegrass-Loving Friars Taught Me About A Life Of Faith: Put First Things First
2. Darryll Jones (Florida A&M), What Is The Difference Between A Church And A Religious Organization? 
3. Madeleine Kearns (The Free Press), The Young Catholic Women Bringing Back Veils 
4. Christianity Today, Taste And See If The Show Is Good: How A Christian Can Revel In Breaking Bad And Better Call Saul
5. A Call to Revival, Over 300 Christian Leaders Sign ‘Confession Of Evangelical Conviction’ Ahead Of 2024 Election

King & Spalding Fights Bias Suit By Straight, White Female Over Summer Associate Diversity Fellowship Program

Law360, King & Spalding Fights Bias Suit Over Summer Program:

King & Spalding LLP is urging a Maryland federal judge to toss a discrimination suit filed by a straight white woman who says she was dissuaded from applying to a summer associate program open only to "diverse" applicants, arguing the student suffered no injury since she did not apply. 

The firm says Sarah Spitalnick's view that she wouldn't be welcome in its program sponsored by the Leadership Council on Legal Diversity since it seeks students with "an ethnically or culturally diverse background or member[s] of the LGBT community" is "misguided."

Reuters, Law Firm King & Spalding Slams Bias Lawsuit Over Diversity Program:

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Tax Whistleblowers Receive $74m Of $263m Recovery; IRS Plans 170% Increase In Whistleblower Office Staff

Washington Post, They Exposed a Tax Cheater. They’ll Share a $74 Million Reward.:

The IRS recovered $263 million from a single individual, ending more than a decade of tax evasion and one of its biggest whistleblower cases ever, according to lawyers from three firms involved in the case.

The three informants will split $74 million, nearly a third of the government’s proceeds and the largest award allowed by law, the lawyers said.

It’s a major win for the IRS whistleblower program, which rewards people who expose high-dollar tax cheats but has come under criticism for its opaque and lumbering process. Collections have tumbled in recent years, from $1.4 billion in 2018 to $337 million last year. ...

The whistleblower office was created in 2006 to close the tax gap — hundreds of billions of dollars go unpaid every year — by encouraging people with direct knowledge to step forward. The office only pursues tax debts of $2 million or more, which translates into six- or seven-digit payouts for the informants.

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Weekly SSRN Tax Article Review And Roundup: Saito Reviews Marks’s Winning By Losing: The Strategy Of Adverse Letter Rulings

This week, Blaine Saito (Ohio State; Google Scholar) reviews a new work by Noah Hertz Marks (Duke), Winning by Losing: The Strategy of Adverse Letter Rulings, 66 B.C. L. Rev. __ (2025).

Tax law is rich with sources. We have sources of binding law in the forms of statutes, regulations, and court cases. But there is also a rich set of sub-regulatory guidance. One of note are Private Letter Rulings (PLRs). While PLRs are only binding on the IRS with respect to a specific taxpayer, those in practice frequently consult PLRs, as they provide insight into the IRS’s reasoning on key issues for which there may be no other form of guidance. PLRs are issued through a collaborative process. When the IRS determines that there may be an adverse ruling in a PLR, it provides numerous off-ramps. Yet, these adverse PLRs exist. Noah Marks explores this puzzle in Winning by Losing: The Strategy of Adverse Letter Rulings. Marks shows that adverse letter rulings exist for numerous reasons, including strategic normative power. His work thus adds not only to tax scholarship, but also our understanding of the long shadow of agency actions.

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Weekly Legal Education Roundup

• ABA, Guidance Memo On Standard 208: Academic Freedom And Freedom Of Expression
• ABA Journal, California Law Deans Have 'Grave Concerns' About New Bar Exam Plans
• Bloomberg Law, Howard University Law School Narrows Ex-Student’s Race Bias Suit
• Chronicle of Higher Education, How Can Professors Learn Students’ Names?
• Daily Business Review, Ex-St. Thomas Univ. Law Professor Sues School Over Firing, Alleging Defamation
• Jewish News of Northern California, Berkeley Law Prof Targeted as ‘Zionist McCarthyist’ Outside of His Antisemitism Course
• Law.com, Federal Judge Won't Stop Title IX Investigation Into Former GMU Law Professor
• Law360, GMU Law School Set To Lose Nearly $40M By 2025

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Tax Policy In The Biden Administration

• American Prospect, Trump’s Tax Cut-A-Rama Total So Far: $9.75 Trillion
• Bloomberg, Company Executives See AI as Key to Global Minimum Tax Challenge
• Bloomberg, Harris’ Most Important Tax Plan Is Unknowable
• Bloomberg, It’s Tax Season for Trump and Harris on the 2024 Campaign Trail
• Bloomberg, Trump Dangles So Many Tax Breaks Even Some Advisers Are Confused

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George Mason Law School: $13m Budget Deficit In FY25 ($38m Over 6 Years); Dean Charged With Balancing Budget And Maintaining #28 U.S. News Ranking

Following upon my previous posts:

• ABA Finds George Mason Out Of Compliance With Accreditation Standard That Requires Law Schools To Have Sufficient Financial Resources (Dec. 8, 2023)
• ABA Finds George Mason Law School Back In Compliance With Financial Resources Accreditation Standard (Mar. 18, 2024)

Law360, GMU Law School Set To Lose Nearly $40M By 2025:

George Mason University's Antonin Scalia Law School will have incurred more than $38 million in losses over five years by the end of its 2025 fiscal year, according to budget projections shared with the wider university's board of visitors at a meeting Thursday.

The amount the Virginia-based law school is poised to lose by next year eclipses $30 million in naming gifts the school received in 2016 from an anonymous donor and the Charles Koch Foundation in honor of the late U.S. Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia. The financial challenges come amid fallout over bombshell allegations against a former longtime faculty member of GMU Law, Joshua Wright, who was accused by former students of sexual misconduct.

The annual losses the school has posted have increased nearly every year, from $3.8 million in 2020, to $3.3 million, $4.3 million, $5.8 million and $7.8 million in the years following. In its 2025 fiscal year, the law school is projected to lose $13.2 million. ...

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Next Week’s Tax Workshops

Tuesday, October 1: Sarah Lawsky (Northwestern; Google Scholar) will present Limiting Languages for Tax Law as part of the UC-San Francisco 2024 Tax Speaker Series. If you would like to attend, please contact Heather Field. 

Friday, October 4: Donald Tobin (Maryland; Google Scholar) will present Have your Cake and Eat it Too, An Apportioned Wealth Tax as part of the Boston College Tax Policy Collaborative. If you would like to attend, please contact Diane Ring. 

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How Can Professors Learn Students’ Names?

Chronicle of Higher Education, How Can Professors Learn Students’ Names? A Scholar of Memory Shares Her Process.:

When Michelle D. Miller leads faculty workshops, she often does what she calls a “party trick” that she uses on the first day of class with her students: learning everyone’s names. As professors have thanked her at the end of her presentations, they’ve often asked how she had pulled that off. So Miller, a professor in the department of psychological sciences at Northern Arizona University, decided to explain her process and the science behind it in a short book. A Teacher’s Guide to Learning Student Names: Why You Should, Why It’s Hard, How You Can is scheduled for a November publication from University of Oklahoma Press. I spoke with Miller about the challenges — and potential payoffs — of learning students’ names, and how instructors can best go about it. The following interview has been edited for length and clarity.

Most of the book is about how to learn students’ names. But first, let’s talk about why. Why would a professor go to the trouble of learning students’ names when classes might be large, and students might be in them for only a short time?

Especially in the post-Covid era, a theme that came up over and over was creating a more inviting, more inclusive classroom atmosphere where it’s less about you, this undifferentiated mass of students, and me, the professor, over here. That’s the very traditional approach, and so many of my fellow faculty are saying: This doesn’t work anymore. ...

You lay out a four-step process for learning a name: attend, say, associate, retrieve. Can you briefly run though how it works? And is there a part of the process we’re most likely to mess up?

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UF Tax Incubator: Complexities, Discontinuities, And Unintended Consequences Of U.S. International Tax Rules

UF Tax Incubator: Complexities, Discontinuities, and Unintended Consequences of US International Tax Rules: Options for Change (American Enterprise Institute Symposium (June 17-18, 2024):

• Forward (p. 1)
• Potential Changes to Section 367 and the Associated Treasury Regulations (p. 11)
• Considerations for Reforming the U.S. Source of Income Rules (p. 27)
• U.S. Subsidiaries of Foreign-Based MNEs — BEAT and Section 163 (p. 43)
• Considerations Relating to CFC Stock Ownership and Allocation of Subpart F Income (p. 65)
• Taxation of Foreign Branches (p. 73)
• Considerations for Reforming the U.S. Transfer Pricing Rules (p. 91)
• U.S. Ownership of Foreign Stock: Dividends and Gains on Sale (p. 111)
• Taxation of Foreign-Derived Intangible Income (p. 127)
• Subpart F and GILTI Recommendations (p. 145)
• Taxation of Foreign Income Earned by Individuals and Minority Shareholders of Passive Foreign Corporations (p. 161)
• FTC Proposals, Part I: Creditable Foreign Taxes (p. 179)
• FTC Proposals, Part II: TCJA White Paper (p. 201)

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How Penn Law Tried To Buy Amy Wax’s Silence

Following up on Tuesday's post, New York Times: Penn Law Suspends Tenured Prof Amy Wax For One-Year With Half-Pay For Making Racist Remarks:  Aaron Sibarium (Washington Free Beacon), How Penn Tried To Buy Amy Wax’s Silence:

The University of Pennsylvania tried to cut a deal with Amy Wax, the tenured law professor who endured years of disciplinary proceedings over her controversial remarks. The school offered to water down the sanctions against her if she agreed to stop discussing—and criticizing—her treatment at the hands of the university. She refused.

So Penn announced Tuesday that it was suspending Wax for a year at half pay and stripping her of an endowed chair. The sanctions, which also include a permanent loss of summer pay, were immediately condemned by the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE), which framed them as a precedent-setting blow to academic freedom. ...

But behind closed doors, the school was prepared to let Wax pay a much lower price—provided she keep her mouth shut about the two-and-a-half-year-long case that made Penn a pariah among academic freedom advocates and compounded the fallout of anti-Israel protests on campus.

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Marks: Winning By Losing—The Strategy Of Adverse Letter Rulings

Noah Hertz Marks (Duke), Winning by Losing: The Strategy of Adverse Letter Rulings, 66 B.C. L. Rev. __ (2025):

Every year, the Internal Revenue Service issues hundreds of Private Letter Rulings (PLRs) responding to formal taxpayer inquiries about how tax law will apply to their proposed situations and transactions. Once issued, PLRs (which read like judicial opinions) functionally bind the Internal Revenue Service with respect to the requesting taxpayer. And while the Internal Revenue Code formally forbids relying on PLRs as precedent, taxpayers and practitioners closely monitor and structure their operations and advice around PLRs.

After submitting a PLR request, taxpayers can withdraw it at any time for any (or no) reason. Furthermore, the PLR process is collaborative, so requesting taxpayers know, far in advance, whether the PLR will be favorable or adverse. 

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