Paul L. Caron
Dean




Tuesday, February 11, 2025

SCOTUSblog Founder Tom Goldstein Rearrested On Tax Evasion Charges After Feds Say He Hid Millions In Crypto

Following up on my previous post, SCOTUSblog Founder Tom Goldstein Hit With 22-Count Federal Tax Evasion Indictment:  Law360, Goldstein Rearrested After Feds Say He Hid Millions In Crypto:

ScotusblogU.S. Supreme Court lawyer and SCOTUSblog publisher Tom Goldstein was arrested again Monday following his earlier release on criminal tax evasion charges, after prosecutors alleged that he secretly made millions of dollars worth of cryptocurrency transactions in recent days and was a serious risk to flee. ...

Goldstein has pled not guilty to a 22-count indictment alleging he schemed to avoid paying taxes for years, including by hiding winnings from high-stakes poker games. The charges were filed a little less than two years after Goldstein retired from private practice, capping a distinguished career in which he argued more than 40 cases in the U.S. Supreme Court, including the historic copyright case Google v. Oracle, and also taught Supreme Court litigation at Harvard Law School.

Prosecutors have outlined new allegations against Goldstein in recent days, alleging that he tampered with potential witnesses during the government's investigation and recently made a series of surreptitious transactions that raise concerns he could try to evade justice.

In the filing unsealed Monday requesting that Goldstein be taken into custody, prosecutors accused him of "failing to disclose the existence of two cryptocurrency wallets through which he received over $8 million in cryptocurrency and sent more than $6 million of cryptocurrency over the last five days."

Bloomberg Law, Gambling With the Law: How SCOTUSblog’s Goldstein Risked All:

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February 11, 2025 in Tax, Tax Daily, Tax News | Permalink

Tax Prof Job Openings: New England, Pace, St. Mary's (Chair), Cincinnati (Visitor)

New England Law | Boston Hiring Announcement (Tenure-Track):

New England Law Logo (2013)New England Law | Boston invites applications from candidates for tenure-track assistant professor positions to begin in the fall 2025 semester.  We seek to hire individuals who are interested in teaching foundational courses, particularly Civil Procedure, Contracts, Property, and Torts, and upper-level courses in the areas of Administrative Law, Business Organizations, Commercial Law, Family Law, and Tax Law.   Applicants must possess a J.D. from an accredited U.S. law school or an equivalent degree, and must demonstrate a commitment to excellent teaching and strong scholarly potential.

Individuals interested in applying for a position should submit a letter of application, a résumé or curriculum vitae, a detailed statement of interest including teaching and research interests, and the names and contact information of three references. These materials should be submitted to the Faculty Appointments Committee, via email to [email protected], with the subject line “Assistant Professor Application.”

New England Law | Boston Hiring Announcement (Faculty Fellow):

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February 11, 2025 in Legal Education, Tax, Tax Daily, Tax Prof Jobs | Permalink

How Expedited Summer Associate Recruiting Affects Law Students And The Firms Hiring Them

American Lawyer, 'None of Us Like It': How Expedited Summer Associate Recruiting Affects Law Students and the Firms Hiring Them:

American Lawyer LogoThe first semester of law school used to be about getting acclimated to law school itself. Students could focus on exploring the opportunities the profession has to offer, getting involved on campus, learning how to be a professional and, of course, studying and achieving good grades on final exams.

However, an arms race among law firms to lock down top talent earlier and earlier—thanks to the pandemic-driven de-emphasis on fall on-campus interviews, or OCIs—has Big Law firms effectively asking law students to make decisions about post-graduate employment before the end of their first semester.

This academic year, an increasing number of law firms opened applications for 1L summer positions on Nov. 1 rather than Dec. 1 or later.

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February 11, 2025 in Legal Ed News, Legal Education | Permalink

Northwestern Hosts Book Event Today For Untaxed: The Rich, The IRS, And A New Approach To Tax Compliance

9781009198714_Untaxed_CoverNorthwestern hosts a book event for Joshua Blank (UC-Irvine; Google Scholar) and Ari Glogower (Northwestern; Google Scholar), Untaxed: The Rich, the IRS, and a New Approach to Tax Compliance (Cambridge University Press 2024). Sarah Lawsky (Northwestern; Google Scholar) will provide commentary. 

One of the most common complaints about the tax system in the United States is that rich taxpayers are able to lower their tax liabilities through abusive tax practices, often outmaneuvering the Internal Revenue Service. Untaxed offers a fresh perspective on the long-standing dilemma of tax avoidance and evasion by the rich by proposing a new legal response: means-based adjustments to the tax compliance rules. These compliance rules govern interactions between taxpayers and the IRS, from filing tax returns to responding to audit letters to paying tax penalties. Untaxed shows how tax compliance rules can be adjusted based on taxpayers' means to level the playing field between the rich and everyone else. Timely and innovative, this book is a must-read for legal scholars, policymakers, tax students, and anyone interested in tax policy and administration.

  • Combines both legal and economic theory with a detailed study of the US tax compliance system
  • Outlines the issues and challenges related to tax noncompliance by the rich
  • Advances tangible and actionable recommendations for policymakers and readers interested in improving the tax compliance rules

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February 11, 2025 in Book Club, Scholarship, Tax, Tax Daily | Permalink

Monday, February 10, 2025

Luke Reviews Cauble’s Taxpayers’ Tax Election Regrets

Charlene D. Luke (Florida; Google Scholar), In (Tax) Hindsight: When Should the Tax System Ease Taxpayer Regrets? (JOTWELL) (reviewing Emily Cauble (Wisconsin; Google Scholar), Taxpayers’ Tax Election Regrets, 77 Tax Law. 77 (2023)).

Jotwell Tax (2023)Emily Cauble explores the extent to which the tax system allows taxpayers “to benefit from hindsight” in her article, Taxpayers’ Tax Election Regrets. Cauble uses concrete tax election examples to categorize the types of hindsight that cause taxpayers regret and to offer recommendations on how the tax system should approach hindsight to “bring more coherence to tax law’s approach and better align its approach with underlying policy goals.”

Cauble’s focus is on explicit, rather than implicit, tax elections; thus, the focus is on elections that require a formal indication of choice to the IRS. Cauble further considers the availability of filing a late election, revoking an election, and filing a protective election. Cauble analyzes formal election processes to highlight when an election-related decision may bring a taxpayer regret and when a taxpayer is able to use hindsight to make an adjustment to the original choice. The article concludes with recommendations for improvements to how the tax system allows hindsight, with the recommendations guided by tax policy goals relating to revenue-raising, fairness, and administrability.

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February 10, 2025 in Scholarship, Tax, Tax Daily, Tax Scholarship | Permalink

Legal Ed News Roundup

Federal Agencies Ditch Law School Recruiting Due To Trump Hiring Freeze

Following up on my previous post, Trump's Hiring Freeze Leaves Thousands Of Law Students Out In The Cold:  Bloomberg Law, Trump Hiring Freeze Has Agencies Ditching Law School Recruiting:

Hiring Freeze TrumpFederal agencies are pulling out of on-campus recruiting events at law schools, following through on President Donald Trump’s directive to freeze hiring.

More than a dozen agencies withdrew from a public interest career fair hosted by New York University’s law school on Thursday and Friday, according to a NYU spokesperson. The annual event saw more than 1,700 job seekers from 20 law schools at last year. Multiple agencies also skipped a Jan. 24 law student recruiting event organized by Georgetown University and George Washington University, according to two people familiar with the situation.

Trump announced an executive order pausing hiring at federal agencies on January 20, the same day he was sworn in for a second term. The order nixed federal jobs and internships in legal and other roles across the federal government, including honors programs for recent law graduates at the Internal Revenue Service and the Justice Department.

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February 10, 2025 in Legal Ed News, Legal Education | Permalink

Tax Bar Steps Up To Help 200 Law Students And Graduates With Rescinded Job Offers From The IRS And DOJ Tax Division Due To Trump Hiring Freeze

Following up on my previous posts:

Caroline Ciraolo, former Acting Assistant Attorney General of the U.S. Department of Justice Tax Division and tax partner in the Washington, D.C. office of the Kostelanetz law firm, is organizing help for individuals whose employment offers were rescinded by the IRS or DOJ Tax Division:

We have read LinkedIn posts encouraging those who lost their positions and sharing employment opportunities. The government's decision to rescind the offers left these folks not only without a job, but in some cases, in a new city without connections, having relocated for the position offered.

This unprecedented turn of events presents an opportunity for the tax bar to step up and lean in. A group of tax practitioners convened for a call this week to discuss pending efforts and options. During the call, we shared information regarding the law students and attorneys whose federal employment offers from the IRS and DOJ Tax were rescinded. We understand that there is a pool of approximately 200 candidates, including: law students who accepted summer internships; law and LLM students who accepted permanent positions through the Honors Program; and laterals attorneys with one or more years legal experience. We also discussed our concerns regarding forced resignations, terminations, and potential terminations of probationary and career IRS and DOJ Tax attorneys. Many of us are meeting with those individuals to discuss career opportunities, share professional contacts and networking opportunities, and offer encouragement. We applaud these continued efforts and know that the time spent is greatly appreciated!

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February 10, 2025 in IRS News, Legal Ed News, Legal Education, Tax, Tax Daily, Tax News | Permalink

TaxProf Blog Weekend Roundup

Sunday, February 9, 2025

NY Times Op-Ed: My Favorite Argument For The Existence Of God

New York Times Op-Ed:  My Favorite Argument for the Existence of God, by Ross Douthat (Author, Believe: Why Everyone Should Be Religious (2025):

Believe 2I think that the most compelling case for being religious — for a default view, before you get to the specifics of creeds and doctrines, that the universe was made for a reason and we’re part of that reason — is found at the convergence of multiple different lines of argument, the analysis of multiple different aspects of the existence in which we find ourselves.

Consider three big examples: the evidence for cosmic design in the fundamental laws and structure of the universe; the unusual place of human consciousness within the larger whole; and the persistence and plausibility of religious and supernatural experience even under supposedly disenchanted conditions.

Each of these realities alone offers good reasons to take religious arguments seriously. Indeed, I think each on its own should be enough to impel someone toward at least a version of Pascal’s Wager. But it’s the fact that a religious perspective makes sense out of all of them — why the universe seems calibrated for our appearance and why consciousness has a supernatural-seeming dimension and why even nonbelievers report having religious experiences — that makes the strongest case for some form of belief.

But do I have a favorite argument within this larger run of converging claims? I was thinking about this while reading the effort by the prolific and precocious (he’s apparently still an undergraduate) essayist who writes under the name Bentham’s Bulldog to rank or grade a long list of arguments for God’s existence.

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February 9, 2025 in Book Club, Faith, Legal Education | Permalink

Super Bowl LIX: Football's Lessons For America (Vince Lombardi)

The Free Press:  Things Worth Remembering, by Charles Lane:

Lombardi Book“I sometimes wonder whether those of us who love football fully appreciate its great lessons,” said Vince Lombardi, in what friends and family called “the speech.” [What It Takes to Be #1: Vince Lombardi on Leadership]

[Football] is a great game, a game of great lessons, a game that has become a symbol of this country’s best attributes—namely, courage, stamina, and coordinated efficiency.

It is a Spartan game, and requires Spartan-like qualities in order to play it. By that, of course, I don’t mean the Spartan tradition of leaving the weak to die. I mean, instead, the qualities of sacrifice, self-denial, dedication, and fearlessness.

Football is a violent game. To play it any other way but violently would be imbecilic. But because of its violent nature, it demands a personal discipline seldom found in modern life. ...

I need no other authority than the great General MacArthur to prove my point, and I quote him:

“Competitive sports keeps alive in all of us a spirit of vitality and enterprise. It teaches the strong to know when they are weak, and the brave to face themselves when they are afraid. It teaches us to be proud and unbending in defeat, yet humble and gentle in victory. It teaches us to master ourselves before we attempt to master others. It teaches us to learn to laugh, yet never forget how to weep. It gives a predominance of courage over timidity.”

I sometimes wonder whether those of us who love football fully appreciate its great lessons.

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February 9, 2025 in Book Club, Faith, Legal Education | Permalink

Most Super Bowl Fans Want Players To Talk About Their Faith

Christianity Today:  Super Bowl Fans Don’t Want Faith Sidelined, by Paul Putz (Baylor Truett Seminary; Author, The Spirit of the Game: American Christianity and Big-Time Sports (2024))::

A new survey shows that many of today’s viewers see sports and Christianity in collaboration rather than in competition.

[F]or Christians who bring their faith onto the field, the Super Bowl represents a supersized platform.

On the Kansas City Chiefs—who have played in four of the past five Super Bowls—owner Clark Hunt has spoken frequently about his faith and how he prioritizes spiritual development on the teamChaplain Marcellus Casey provides spiritual support and care, while players like cornerback Trent McDuffie describe faith as “the biggest thing in my life.”

The Chiefs also have kicker Harrison Butker, a conservative Catholic who leans more into political activism and made waves earlier in the year for his controversial remarks at Benedictine College.

On the other side of the field, the Philadelphia Eagles also hold a legacy of outspoken Christian athletes, with the team’s faithful players receiving so much attention in 2017 that an entire book about them was published.

Chaplain Ted Winsley served on that team, and he continues to work with and disciple the Eagles today, including Christian wide receiver A. J. Brown. During the playoffs, Brown went viral for opening up and reading Jim Murphy’s Inner Excellence on the sidelinesin the middle of a game—a book written by a Christian and strongly shaped by a faith-based perspective.

So what do football fans think of all this God talk? A new survey out this week from Sports Spectrum and Pinkston found that most sports fans tuning in on Sunday—the majority of whom are Christian themselves—will be happy to hear players and coaches display their faith.

Super Bowl

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February 9, 2025 in Faith, Legal Education | Permalink

NY Times: Can I Go To Church When I Don’t Believe?

New York Times, Can I Go to Church When I Don’t Believe?:

NY Times EthicistI grew up in the Catholic tradition, but after obtaining several university degrees — including one in religion — it became clear to me that Jesus wasn’t divine and that the cobbling together of the Bible in the fourth century was a consummate work of spin-doctoring. I have about 20 arguments in defense of this, not the least of which is Christ’s inefficacy. After 2,000 years, his followers have split into thousands of sects, many of whom have shot and killed members of rival sects. Think of Northern Ireland, World War II. It doesn’t seem to me the way an omnipotent deity should operate.

But boy, oh, boy, do I love the artistic output of Christianity. Bach’s B-minor Mass, the Fauré Requiem, St. Paul’s Cathedral — all these lift my spirit. I love a beautiful Christian service.(Where else do you hear an organ like that?) Actors talk about ‘‘working from the outside in,’’ in which a physical position unlocks inner emotions. For me, kneeling does this. I don’t pray, but the act creates humility and gratitude. It does me good. Then there’s the lovely sense of community in a congregation.

I’ll never be converted. So I guess I’m lying when I turn up at a service and recite the Creed and sing the hymns as lustily as anyone else. Am I hurting anyone by doing this? Is it, for want of a better word, a sin? — Name Withheld

From the Ethicist:
A church represents a confluence of practices, beliefs and community, and its congregants will be drawn for all sorts of reasons. No doubt you’re participating in these services in a different frame of mind from many others who are there, but Catholics have long been aware of the aesthetic appeal of their tradition’s art, music, architecture and liturgy — an aspect of the via pulchritudinis, or way of beauty, that Pope Francis has invoked. ...

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February 9, 2025 in Faith, Legal Education | Permalink

NY Times: Trump Signs Order To Fight ‘Anti-Christian Bias’

New York Times, Trump Signs Order to Fight ‘Anti-Christian Bias’:

Anti-Christian BiasPresident Trump signed an executive order on Thursday aimed at eradicating “anti-Christian bias” in the federal government by having agencies review policies and practices that he says have tried to squelch religious activities and activism.

Mr. Trump, who announced the order at the National Prayer Breakfast, appointed his new attorney general, Pam Bondi, to lead a task force at the Justice Department to spearhead the effort. Mr. Trump said the task force would “fully prosecute anti-Christian violence and vandalism in our society” and “move heaven and earth to defend the rights of Christians and religious believers nationwide.” ...

The executive order is meant to reverse what it calls an “egregious pattern of targeting peaceful Christians, while ignoring violent, anti-Christian offenses” under President Joseph R. Biden Jr. It cited the convictions of anti-abortion demonstrators for blocking access to abortion clinics.

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February 9, 2025 in Faith, Legal Education | Permalink

The Supreme Court's SFFA Decision Has Caused An Unprecedented Shift In Law School Admissions

Chronicle of Higher Education Op-Ed:  An Unprecedented Shift in Law School Admissions, by Aaron Taylor (Executive Director, AccessLex Center for Legal Education Excellence):

Chronicle of Higher Education (2023)The post-affirmative action era is underway, with baleful results.

In mid-December, the American Bar Association released enrollment statistics for law students who began their studies in 2024 at the almost 200 ABA-approved law schools. The release was much anticipated because the data reflects the first cohort that went through the application process after the U.S. Supreme Court issued its ruling in the affirmative-action case, Students for Fair Admissions. While the court stopped short of outright prohibiting the consideration of applicant race, it narrowed permissible consideration to an extent that forced many law schools to revamp their admissions policies.

The decision was issued in late June 2023, at the tail end of the 2022-23 admissions cycle and just before the launch of the next cycle. The timing created ideal conditions for investigating the decision’s impact and comparing the cohorts that were admitted before and after it was issued. Relevant differences between the cohorts can be attributed in large part to the court’s ruling. The dominant prediction was that SFFA would harm the admission chances of applicants from underrepresented racial and ethnic backgrounds, those who tended to benefit from affirmative action. With the 2024 data, we can test this hypothesis.

In its data release, the ABA provided tables displaying topline demographic comparisons of the 2023 and 2024 first-year cohorts. The trends are striking: They show overall enrollment patterns that remained relatively stable. The percentage of white first-year enrollees fell about 1 percent, for instance, and the percentage of Asian first-year enrollees rose 2 percent. If SFFA had an impact on the racial and ethnic composition of the 2024 cohort, it appeared modest.

But the topline data is not sufficient for drawing definitive conclusions because it does not capture the nuances of legal education’s prestige hierarchy.

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February 9, 2025 in Legal Ed News, Legal Education | Permalink

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 #1:

  1. SSRN Logo (2018)[270 Downloads]  The Role Of Unrealized Gains And Borrowing In The Taxation Of The Rich, by Edward Fox (Michigan; Google Scholar) & Zachary Liscow (Yale; Google Scholar)
  2. [258 Downloads]  A Roadmap to NIL and Taxation, by Doron Narotzki (Akron; Google Scholar) & Yariv Brauner (Florida; Google Scholar)
  3. [235 Downloads]  Tax Treaties Do Not Protect Overseas Americans, by Laura Snyder (Association of Americans Resident Overseas), Karen Alpert (FixTheTaxTreaty.org) & John Richardson (TaxResidentAbroad.com)
  4. [234 Downloads]  Sustainable Tax Governance: A Shared Responsibility, by Hans Gribnau (Tilburg)
  5. [224 Downloads]  The Legality of Charitable Remedial Discrimination, by Roger Colinvaux (Catholic University)

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

February 9, 2025 in Scholarship, Tax, Tax Daily, Tax Scholarship, Top 5 Downloads | Permalink

Saturday, February 8, 2025

This Week's Ten Most Popular TaxProf Blog Posts

Top Ten 2Legal Education: 

  1. MPR News, Minnesota Law School Cancels Search For Assistant Dean Of DEI Due To Trump's Executive Order
  2. Honolulu Civil Beat, FIRE Blasts University Of Hawaii For Censoring Law Prof's PowerPoint Presentation
  3. New Orleans Times-Picayune, Appeals Court Blocks Order Requiring LSU To Reinstate Law Prof Who ‘Used Vulgar Language To Criticize Gov. Landry And President Trump’
  4. Call for Papers, Why Now? Women, Equality, And The Legal Academy
  5. Reuters, 5,300 February California Bar Takers May Face Technical And Logistical Problems With New Exam: ‘It Feels Like Hazing’
  6. Louisiana Illuminator, Judge Orders LSU To Reinstate Law Prof Removed From Teaching Due To Political Comments In Class
  7. Ilya Shapiro (Manhattan Institute), Lawless: The Miseducation Of America's Elites
  8. ABA Journal Op-Ed (Beth Caldwell, Southwestern), Southwestern Law Prof's Dying Father (A Retired Pepperdine Professor) Leads Family Out Of The Palisades Fire
  9. Bloomberg, 10 Finalists In Law School Innovation Awards
  10. Paul Caron (Dean, Pepperdine), Legal Ed News Roundup

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

Tax:

  1. Tax Notes, IRS Chief Counsel Rescinds Job Offers To 3Ls Accepted Into Honors Program 
  2. Georgetown Law, Brian Galle Awarded Named Professorship
  3. Michael Graetz (Columbia), Presentation of The Power To Destroy: How The Antitax Movement Hijacked America At San Diego
  4. Scott Hodge (Tax Foundation), Roger Meiners (Texas-Arlington) & Andrew Morriss (Texas A&M), Ring Fencing Bad Tax Policy
  5. Jakob Brounstein (Institute for Fiscal Studies), Presentation of Ecuador's Tax On Tax Haven Ownership At Oxford
  6. Call for Papers and Commentators, 28th Annual Critical Tax Conference At Wisconsin
  7. SSRN, The Top Five New Tax Papers
  8. Bryan Camp (Texas Tech), Lesson From The Tax Court: The Difficult Path To Equitable Tolling
  9. Paul Caron (Dean, Pepperdine), Tax Policy In The Trump Administration
  10. Adam Kern (San Diego), Review Of The Role Of Unrealized Gains And Borrowing In The Taxation Of The Rich By Edward Fox (Michigan) & Zachary Liscow (Yale)

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

Faith:

  1. New York Times (David French), Why Are So Many Christians So Cruel?
    Christianity Today (Alexandra Hudson), It’s Time For A New Era Of Christian Civility
  2. New York Times (Jessica Grose), Even Religious People Don’t Trust Religious Institutions
  3. New York Times (Ruth Graham), SMU Wants To Separate From The Church But Keep ‘Methodist’ In Its Name
  4. Dispatch Faith (Gregory Jensen), Men Flocking To Orthodox Christianity: The Good, The Bad, And The Ugly
  5. Sydney Smith (J.D. 2024, USC), Bob Jones University In The 21st Century: Religious Colleges That Discriminate Against LGBTQ+ Students

Editor's Note:  If you would like to receive a weekly email each Sunday with links to faith posts on TaxProf Blog, email me here

February 8, 2025 in About This Blog, Faith, Legal Education, Tax, Weekly Top 10 TaxProf Blog Posts | Permalink

As Trump's DEI Crackdown Escalates, Law Faculty Choose Between Silence And Resistance

Inside Higher Ed, As the DEI Crackdown Escalates, Faculty Choose Between Silence and Resistance:

White HouseRepublicans in red states have been attacking diversity, equity and inclusion in higher education for years. But when Donald Trump retook the White House and turned the federal executive branch against DEI, blue-state academics had new cause to worry. A tenured law professor in the University of California system—who wished to remain anonymous for fear of retaliation and harassment—said they read one of the executive orders that Trump quickly issued on DEI and anticipated trouble.

“Seeing how ambiguous it is with respect to how they are defining diversity, equity and inclusion, and understanding that the ambiguity is purposeful, I decided to take off from my [university website] bio my own specialty in critical race theory, so that I would not be a target either of the [Trump] administration or of the people that they are empowering to harass,” the professor said.

The professor said they also told their university they’re not interested in teaching a class called Critical Race Theory for the rest of the Trump administration.

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February 8, 2025 in Legal Ed News, Legal Education | Permalink

More Rich Taxpayers Learn Their Data Was Stolen in Huge IRS Leak

Bloomberg Law, More Rich Taxpayers Learn Their Data Was Stolen in Huge IRS Leak:

IRS Logo (2023)The IRS sent another wave of letters to taxpayers whose data was stolen amid a historic breach by an agency contractor several years ago.

Charles Littlejohn stole the tax returns of prominent billionaires and President Donald Trump between 2018 and 2020 and then leaked them to news organizations, which published a series of stories with the information. The notices are the first time those not named in the news articles realized they were part of the breach.

The tax return information for almost 100,000 individuals and businesses was included in the data Littlejohn stole, according to an email from Department of Justice attorney Jonathan Jacobson, which was released Jan. 8 as part of Littlejohn’s appeal of his sentence.

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February 8, 2025 in IRS News, Tax, Tax Daily, Tax News | Permalink

Friday, February 7, 2025

Weekly SSRN Tax Article Review And Roundup: Kern Reviews The Role Of Unrealized Gains And Borrowing In The Taxation Of The Rich By Fox & Liscow

This week, Adam Kern (San Diego; Google Scholar) reviews Edward Fox (Michigan; Google Scholar) and Zachary Liscow (Yale; Google Scholar), The Role of Unrealized Gains and Borrowing in the Taxation of the Rich.

Adam kern

Just before Mark Zuckerberg was born, William Andrews dubbed the realization rule the “Achilles heel” of the income tax. The main costs of the rule are well-known: It allows taxes on capital income to be deferred and, in some cases, avoided entirely. Journalists report that some of the richest people in the world—including Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, Warren Buffet, and, yes, Mark Zuckerberg—have deferred or avoided tax on much of their capital gains simply by declining to realize them, instead borrowing funds to finance their consumption.

But how much income actually escapes taxation due to the realization rule? And to what extent do the rich use borrowing to unlock untaxed appreciation? 

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February 7, 2025 in Adam Kern, Scholarship, Tax, Tax Scholarship, Weekly SSRN Roundup, Weekly Tax Roundup | Permalink

Weekly Legal Education Roundup

Next Week’s Tax Workshops

Next Week's Tax Workshops - linkedinTuesday, February 11: Jesús Villero (Penn Wharton; Google Scholar) will present Tuition Effects of IDR Plans: Evidence from the Introduction of the PAYE Repayment Plan as part of the Georgetown Tax Law and Public Finance Workshop. If you would like to attend, please contact Brian Galle

Wednesday, February 12: Ari Glogower (Northwestern; Google Scholar) & Andrew Granato (J.D.-Ph.D. Candidate, Yale; Google Scholar) will present Reforming The Taxation Of Life Insurance, 44 Va. Tax Rev. ___ (2025), as part of the Missouri Tax Policy Colloquium. If you would like to attend, please contact David Gamage

Thursday, February 13: Michael Graetz (Columbia; Google Scholar) will present The Power to Destroy - How the Antitax Movement Hijacked America (Feb. 13, 2024 Princeton University Press) as part of the UCLA Business Law Breakfast. If you would like to attend, please RSVP

Thursday, February 13: Amanda Parsons (Colorado; Google Scholar) will present Tax Law for Informational Capitalism as part of the Duke Tax Policy Seminar. If you would like to attend, please contact Larry Zelenak

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February 7, 2025 in Colloquia, Legal Education, Scholarship, Tax, Tax Daily, Tax Scholarship, Tax Workshops | Permalink

Tax Policy In The Trump Administration

Thursday, February 6, 2025

Jurow Kleiman Presents Redistributive User Fees Today At Duke

Ariel Jurow Kleiman (USC; Google Scholar) presents Redistributive User Fees at Duke today as part of its Tax Policy Seminar hosted by Larry Zelenak:

Ariel_Jurow_KleimanWhile theory suggests that redistribution should occur entirely through progressive income taxes, political and legal limits at the state and local levels render this ideal redistribution impossible. Public finance models offer user fees as an alternative revenue source that has the added benefit of improving allocative efficiency. The problem with fee-financing is that too many people can’t afford to pay fees for necessary or enriching public services. The result is deprivation and exclusion from vital state and local public services.

This Article identifies a middle way overlooked by the tax policy and public finance literatures: redistributive user fees. More accurately, these are fee-financed public services for which vulnerable users, like those with low-incomes or a disability, are exempt from paying the fee. These non-paying users receive a free service while paying users, in theory, pay a higher fee to subsidize them. The fees can appease Americans’ disdain for redistributive taxes while also minimizing the deprivation and exclusion that fee-financing often entails. 

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February 6, 2025 in Colloquia, Scholarship, Tax, Tax Daily, Tax Scholarship, Tax Workshops | Permalink

Clarke Presents Apportioned Direct Taxes Today At Texas

Conor Clarke (Washington University; Google Scholar) presents Apportioned Direct Taxes (with Ari Glogower (Northwestern; Google Scholar)) at Texas today as part of its Faculty Colloquium Series

ClarkeThe Constitution requires that Congress apportion any “direct” tax among the states by population. This once-dormant provision is now the most important constitutional limitation on Congress’s taxing power. Last year, in Moore v. United States, the Supreme Court seriously considered, for the first time in decades, whether to invalidate an Act of Congress as an unapportioned direct tax. While the law survived, Moore signals a new era in which scholars and policymakers must again take apportionment seriously. Yet the apportionment requirement remains poorly understood.

This Article provides a new account of apportionment by examining how Congress and Treasury actually designed and implemented apportioned direct taxes. 

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February 6, 2025 in Colloquia, Scholarship, Tax, Tax Daily, Tax Scholarship, Tax Workshops | Permalink

Southwestern Law Prof's Dying Father (A Retired Pepperdine Professor) Leads Family Out Of The Palisades Fire

ABA Journal Op-Ed:  A Fond Farewell: Law Prof's Dying Father Leads Family Out of the Palisades Wildfire:, by Beth Caldwell (Southwestern):

CaldwellMy father, Dan Caldwell, a distinguished professor emeritus at Pepperdine University, was diagnosed with an incurable form of blood cancer several years ago. We were very close. In fact, my husband; our two children, ages 9 and 11; and I lived with my parents in order to support them with their needs and spend as much quality time together as possible. We knew our time was limited given my dad’s cancer diagnosis; in addition, my mother has been diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease. She is still very sharp and aware but cannot drive and needs some support with cooking meals and remembering daily tasks.

In the week leading up to the fire, my father’s body had started shutting down. He entered hospice care at our home in Pacific Palisades, which was where I had grown up and my parents lived for 46 years. By Tuesday, it seemed clear that his hours were numbered. He gathered me, my mom and my brother and sister around him on his bed, had us hold hands and said a poignant goodbye. ...

And then we looked out of his bedroom window and saw flames in the hills. They were moving quickly down the hillside. My dad always told us that if you can see flames, a fire was dangerously close and you had to get out. ... We realized we had to leave. ...

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February 6, 2025 in Legal Ed News, Legal Education | Permalink

Appeals Court Blocks Order Requiring LSU To Reinstate Law Prof Who ‘Used Vulgar Language To Criticize Gov. Landry And President Trump’

New Orleans Times-Picayune, Appeals Court Blocks Order Requiring LSU Reinstate Law Professor Who Criticized Jeff Landry:

LSU LevyA state appeals court has overturned part of a district court order that would have required LSU to reinstate a professor it suspended after he used vulgar language to criticize Gov. Jeff Landry and President Donald Trump.

LSU last month suspended Ken Levy, a tenured law professor, saying it was investigating “student complaints of inappropriate, vulgar, and harassing statements.” Levy sued, arguing LSU was interfering with his free speech and due process rights, and a district court judge ordered LSU to return him to a classroom while the legal battle plays out.

On Tuesday, a three-judge panel of the 1st Circuit Court of Appeal agreed with LSU that it was premature to force the university to reinstate Levy.

"A temporary restraining order, when in mandatory form and commands the doing of something, may not issue without a full evidentiary hearing," said the decision from judges Allison Penzato, Tess Stromberg and Curtis Calloway. ...

Landry weighed in on the controversy Tuesday afternoon with a social media post:

WAFB, First Circuit Sides With LSU in Law Professor Case:

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February 6, 2025 in Legal Ed News, Legal Education | Permalink

Graetz Presents The Power To Destroy: How The Antitax Movement Hijacked America Today At San Diego

Michael Graetz (Columbia; Google Scholar) presents The Power to Destroy—How The Antitax Movement Hijacked America (2024) at San Diego today as part of its Tax Speaker Series:

The power to destroyThe postwar United States enjoyed large, widely distributed economic rewards—and most Americans accepted that taxes were a reasonable price to pay for living in a society of shared prosperity. Then in 1978 California enacted Proposition 13, a property tax cap that Ronald Reagan hailed as a “second American Revolution,” setting off an antitax, antigovernment wave that has transformed American politics and economic policy. In The Power to Destroy, Michael Graetz tells the story of the antitax movement and how it holds America hostage—undermining the nation’s ability to meet basic needs and fix critical problems.

In 1819, Chief Justice John Marshall declared that the power to tax entails “the power to destroy.” But The Power to Destroy argues that tax opponents now wield this destructive power. Attacking the IRS, protecting tax loopholes, and pushing tax cuts from Reagan to Donald Trump, the antitax movement is threatening the nation’s social safety net, increasing inequality, ballooning the national debt, and sapping America’s financial strength. The book chronicles how the movement originated as a fringe enterprise promoted by zealous outsiders using false economic claims and thinly veiled racist rhetoric, and how—abetted by conservative media and Grover Norquist’s “taxpayer protection pledge"—it evolved into a mainstream political force.

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February 6, 2025 in Book Club, Scholarship, Tax, Tax Daily, Tax Scholarship | Permalink

Wednesday, February 5, 2025

Osofsky Presents Wellness And The Tax Law Today At Missouri

Leigh Osofsky (North Carolina; Google Scholar) presents Wellness and the Tax Law, 59 Ga. L. Rev. ___ (2025) at Missouri today as part of its Tax Policy Colloquium hosted by David Gamage:

Leigh-osofskyThe tax law has long provided extensive subsidies for "medical care." These subsidies cost the government hundreds of billions of dollars a year. The definition of medical care, which is at the heart of these subsidies, originated many decades ago, at a time when there was little to no conception of wellness. 

Times have changed in the medical world. Medical science now emphasizes that wellness practices, like exercise, meditation, and social connection, have an important impact on physical as well as mental health, including by playing a significant role in preventing and treating disease. Under the tax statute, medical care includes "treatment. .. or prevention of disease." The tax law nonetheless disallows subsidies for wellness expenditures under the theory that they are "merely beneficial to general health." This tension between medical science and tax law demands that we reappraise tax law's medical care subsidy. 

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February 5, 2025 in Colloquia, Scholarship, Tax, Tax Daily, Tax Scholarship, Tax Workshops | Permalink

5,300 February California Bar Takers May Face Technical And Logistical Problems With New Exam: ‘It Feels Like Hazing’

Reuters, California’s New Bar Exam Hits Early Snags, Examinees Report:

California Bar (2021)California will roll out its new bar exam on Feb. 25, but test takers say they have already encountered technical and logistical problems ranging from crashed computers and distracting online proctors on mock exams to an inability to schedule their tests.

The stakes are high for the state's more than 5,300 February bar takers — who must pass the two-day exam in order to become licensed lawyers — and for the State Bar of California, which last year became the first to ditch the national bar exam and develop its own test to cut costs.

The February test will also be the first bar exam to allow remote participation since the COVID-19 pandemic pushed testing online in 2020 and 2021, which led to technology problems.

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February 5, 2025 in Legal Ed News, Legal Education | Permalink

10 Finalists In Bloomberg Law School Innovation Awards

Bloomberg Innovation 2024-25

Press Release, Bloomberg Law's Law School Innovation Program Honors 10 Finalists:

Bloomberg Law today announced that it has named 10 finalists in its Law School Innovation Program, now in its third year. The program aims to identify, recognize, and connect the law schools that are pioneering educational innovations that benefit their students, their schools, and the legal field.

The focus of the 2024-2025 Law School Innovation Program is career resilience. Bloomberg Law asked law schools what they are doing to help students prevent burnout and build resilience for a fulfilling long-term legal career. Program evaluators reviewed innovations that address and eradicate at least one root cause of career burnout, either by better preparing students on their career path or by fostering change in the legal community. Innovations submitted for consideration were grouped into three categories: career pathing, technology, and well-being initiatives.

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February 5, 2025 in Legal Ed News, Legal Education | Permalink

Ring Fencing Bad Tax Policy

Scott Hodge (Tax Foundation), Roger E. Meiners (Texas-Arlington; Google Scholar) & Andrew P. Morriss (Texas A&M; Google Scholar), Ring Fencing Bad Tax Policy

SSRN Logo (2018)This article examines the distortions caused by tax exemptions granted to nonprofit and member-serving organizations, which encompass a significant share of economic activity. Originally intended to support public welfare, these exemptions have expanded to benefit entities that operate like taxable businesses, creating market inefficiencies and eroding the tax base. The tax-free status of nonprofit hospitals, credit unions, and university investment funds shifts the fiscal burden onto other taxpayers, exacerbating economic imbalances. Reforming these exemptions—through stricter definitions of tax-exempt status and enhanced enforcement of unrelated business income tax (UBIT) rules—could generate substantial revenue while preserving protections for genuine charitable organizations. 

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February 5, 2025 in Scholarship, Tax, Tax Daily, Tax Scholarship | Permalink

Tuesday, February 4, 2025

Liscow Presents The Role Of Unrealized Gains And Borrowing In The Taxation Of The Rich Today At Georgetown

Zachary Liscow (Yale; Google Scholar) presents The Role of Unrealized Gains and Borrowing in the Taxation of the Rich (with Edward G. Fox (Michigan; Google Scholar) at Georgetown today as part of its Tax Law and Public Finance Workshop hosted by Brian Galle and Day Manoli:

Zachary liscowAs deficits rise and concerns about tax avoidance by the rich increase, we study how unrealized gains and borrowing affect Americans’ income taxes. We have four main findings: First, measuring “economic income” as currently-taxed income plus new unrealized gains, the income tax base captures 60% of economic income of the top 1% of wealth-holders (and 71% adjusting for inflation) and the vast majority of income for lower wealth groups. Second, adjusting for unrealized gains substantially lessens the degree of progressivity in the income tax, although it remains largely progressive. Third, we quantify for the first time the amount of borrowing across the full wealth distribution. Focusing on the top 1%, while total borrowing is substantial, new borrowing each year is fairly small (1-2% of economic income) compared to their new unrealized gains, suggesting that “buy, borrow, die” is not a dominant tax avoidance strategy for the rich. 

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February 4, 2025 in Colloquia, Scholarship, Tax, Tax Daily, Tax Scholarship, Tax Workshops | Permalink

Call For Papers: Why Now? Women, Equality, And The Legal Academy

Call for Papers: Why Now? Women, Equality, and the Legal Academy:

UMKC Law ReviewIn 2012, the prior chairs of WLE – 22 in number, including Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Herma Hill Kay – wrote individually to generate collaboratively a history of the Section of Women in Legal Education. Reflections of Women in Legal Education: Stories from Four Decades of Section Chairs, 80 UMKC L. Rev. 659 (2012). Now, more than a decade later, we see a world made by their innovations as well as efforts to limit the deployment of categories of identity in higher education. The UMKC Law Review has agreed to host another symposium on these issues.

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February 4, 2025 in Conferences, Legal Ed Scholarship, Legal Education, Scholarship | Permalink

FIRE Blasts University Of Hawaii For Censoring Law Prof's PowerPoint Presentation

Honolulu Civil Beat, Free Speech Group Blasts UH For Censoring Law School Presentation:

For a decade University of Hawaiʻi law instructor Ken Lawson used a simple PowerPoint to teach first-year law students about the legal consequences of a fatal shooting.

Instead of using a generic diagram, Lawson used pictures of real colleagues at UH’s William S. Richardson School of Law to depict the hypothetical crime. The most recent version, which Lawson used in a class last fall, displayed photos of two deans, with Lawson as the accidental victim.

Lawson PPT

That PowerPoint slide prompted a cascade of objections. An anonymous whistleblower objected to the depiction of violence. UH then deleted the deans’ photos from recorded class material without Lawson’s permission, even though he had violated no law or university policy. Lawson also was barred from using photos of faculty or students in lecture slides going forward.

Now a national free speech organization [FIRE] is pressuring UH to reverse its censorship of Lawson’s class materials [Law Professor Challenges University After Campus ‘Shooting’ Hypothetical Changed in Lesson Plan].

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February 4, 2025 in Legal Ed News, Legal Education | Permalink

New Tax Prof Articles In Tax Notes

Tax Notes Federal (2022)Richard Schmalbeck (Duke) & Jay A. Soled (Rutgers; Google Scholar), Make the GSTT Exemption Portable Between Spouses, 186 Tax Notes Fed. 311 (Jan. 13, 2025):

In this article, Schmalbeck and Soled argue that the generation-skipping transfer tax exemption should be portable between spouses, which would be consistent with other code provisions that treat married couples as a single economic unit.

Jay A. Soled (Rutgers; Google Scholar) & Leslie Book (Villanova; Google Scholar), The Need for a General Two-Year Statute of Limitations, 186 Tax Notes Fed. 493 (Jan. 20, 2025):

In this article, Soled and Book argue that technological advances have eliminated the need for a general three-year statute of limitations and that Congress should thus shorten it to two years.

Kathleen DeLaney Thomas (North Carolina; Google Scholar), Designing a Standard Business Deduction, 186 Tax Notes Fed. 503 (Jan. 20, 2025):

In this article, Thomas explains how a standard business deduction could be structured and implemented to simplify small business taxation and reduce compliance costs.

Jeffrey L. Hoopes (North Carolina; Google Scholar), Eliminating the Corporate AMT Wouldn’t Cost Much in Lost Revenue, 186 Tax Notes Fed. 509 (Jan. 20, 2025):

In this article, Hoopes examines the effect of the corporate alternative minimum tax on the effective tax rates of 10 companies [AirBnb, Ally Financial, Blackstone, Corebridge Financial, Devon Energy, Duke Energy, GE, KKR, NVR, Whirlpool].

Doron Narotzki (Akron; Google Scholar) & Vered Narotzki (S.J.D. Candidate, Florida), TCJA: The False Dawn of Tax Reform, 186 Tax Notes Fed. 521 (Jan. 20, 2025):

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February 4, 2025 in Scholarship, Tax, Tax Analysts, Tax Daily, Tax Scholarship | Permalink

Monday, February 3, 2025

Brounstein Presents Ecuador's Tax On Tax Haven Ownership Today At Oxford

Jakob A. Brounstein (Institute for Fiscal Studies; Google Scholar) presents The Three Body Problem: Ecuador's Tax on Tax Haven Ownership at Oxford today as part of its Centre for Business Taxation Seminars

Brounstein_headshot_ifsCan a country reduce its exposure to tax havens, and what are the consequences? We analyze the effects of a corporate tax surcharge applied by Ecuador since 2015 to its domestic firms whose owners are in tax havens. This reform was made possible by the prior establishment of an ownership registry in 2012. We compare the behavior of firms with tax haven owners at baseline (``exposed firms''), versus other internationally-owned firms, in a difference-in-differences design. The reform induced 12 percent of exposed firms to reduce their tax haven ownership to zero, by substituting towards foreign non-haven owners. Newly reported owners are more likely to consist of individuals, rather than firms, thus raising beneficial ownership transparency. Exposed firms also increased their corporate tax payments by 15%, without reducing their employment and investment in Ecuador. Yet, transactions between exposed firms and tax haven parties did not decrease. 

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February 3, 2025 in Colloquia, Scholarship, Tax, Tax Daily, Tax Scholarship, Tax Workshops | Permalink

Legal Ed News Roundup

Minnesota Law School Cancels Search For Assistant Dean Of DEI Due To Trump's Executive Order

MPR News, U of M Law School Holds Off on Hiring Assistant Dean of DEI:

Minnesota Logo (2020)The University of Minnesota Law School is halting the hiring of a new assistant dean of diversity, equity and inclusion as President Donald Trump continues to crack down on DEI in federal programs.

Dean William McGeveran said he “had no choice but to pause the search” for an assistant dean of DEI. McGeveran made the comments in an email on Friday. The school has spent at least the last three months searching for a new assistant DEI dean and is canceling scheduled visits for the finalists.

McGeveran cited a changing landscape in higher education, following Trump’s order that put federal DEI workers on paid leave. He also said the school is reassessing its DEI programs.

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February 3, 2025 in Legal Ed News, Legal Education | Permalink

Lesson From The Tax Court:  The Difficult Path To Equitable Tolling

Lessons From The Tax Court (2024)When a taxpayer contests IRS collection actions in a Collection Due Process (CDP) hearing, the hearing is officially over when the Office of Appeals issues a formal Notice of Determination.  Section 6330(d)(1) gives taxpayers 30 days from the date of that Notice to petition the Tax Court for judicial review of the Office of Appeals decision.

We now know that the doctrine of equitable tolling can extend the 30-day limitation period in §6330 because that timing requirement is not jurisdictional.  Boechler v. Commissioner, 596 U.S. 199 (2022).  The fact that the deadline is non-jurisdiction, however, does not lessen its importance.  It just means that the petition gets dismissed for failure to state a timely claim rather than because the Tax Court lacks jurisdiction to hear the matter.  Nor does the doctrine of equitable tolling give taxpayers much wiggle room to avoid the deadline by pleading “not fair!”  To be “not fair” in the relevant sense, taxpayers must be able to show the right causality: how events beyond their control caused them to miss the deadline.

In Debra Reed and Timothy Reed v. Commissioner, T.C. Memo. 2025-4 (Judge Way) (Jan. 16, 2025), the taxpayers had their identify stolen in 2012.  It caused them no end of grief.  They attempted to use that unfortunate experience to justify filing their Tax Court petition after the petition deadline.  In response Judge Way became Judge “No Way” because the taxpayers were unable to show how the identify theft caused them to miss their CDP petition deadline...by some four years.

Details below the fold.

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February 3, 2025 in Bryan Camp, New Cases, Scholarship, Tax, Tax Daily, Tax Practice And Procedure, Tax Scholarship | Permalink | Comments (0)

TaxProf Blog Weekend Roundup

Sunday, February 2, 2025

Men Flocking To Orthodox Christianity: The Good, The Bad, And The Ugly

Dispatch Faith: Men Flocking to Orthodoxy: the Good, the Bad, and the Ugly:

Dispatch FaithThe media have it wrong. OK, maybe not just the media. I’m not sure if Orthodox Christians and the broader Christian community have thought through the implications of the reported uptick in young people (primarily men) becoming Orthodox. There are three questions we need to ask to understand what is—and more importantly—is not happening in the life of the Orthodox Church in the U.S.

First, is there actually a growing trend of young men looking to become Orthodox Christians? Second, is it correct to describe Eastern Orthodox Christianity as “masculine,” especially in contrast to “feminine” Western Christian traditions? Third, and most importantly for me as an Orthodox priest, what does the embrace of these popular narratives say about the Orthodox Church and our relationship to the wider American culture? ...

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February 2, 2025 in Faith, Legal Education | Permalink

NY Times Op-Ed: Even Religious People Don’t Trust Religious Institutions

New York Times Op-Ed:  Even Religious People Don’t Trust Religious Institutions, by Jessica Grose:

While the Catholic Church’s sex abuse scandals have been widely publicized, other major denominations have had sex abuse scandals of their own. In 2019, The Houston Chronicle published a blockbuster investigation of the Southern Baptist Convention, finding that 263 church officials and volunteers were convicted of sex abuse crimes over the preceding 20 years in 30 states and the District of Columbia. And last week The Washington Post published another heartbreaker, about an Episcopal Church youth minister named Jeff Taylor who was accused of sexual abuse by children over many years and was not held accountable by several of the organizations that employed him.

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February 2, 2025 in Faith, Legal Education | Permalink

Bob Jones University In The 21st Century: Religious Colleges That Discriminate Against LGBTQ+ Students

Sydney Smith (J.D. 2024, USC), Note, Bob Jones University in the 21st Century: An Examination of Charitable Tax-Exempt Status and Religious Exemption from Title IX for Religious Colleges That Discriminate against LGBTQ+ Students, 97 S. Cal. L. Rev. 737 (2024): 

Southern california law reviewOn March 30, 2021, the Religious Exemption Accountability Project (“REAP”) filed a historic class action lawsuit with the goal of challenging the abusive conditions that many private religious colleges and universities have created for LGBTQ+ students. These unsafe conditions have been permitted for decades by the U.S. Department of Education’s policies surrounding religious freedom. In the complaint, plaintiffs criticize the privileges—tax-exempt status and government funding—that are bestowed upon these institutions despite their discriminatory practices, denouncing the special treatment they receive simply for shrouding their behavior in religious justifications for protection. The complaint went on to criticize the religious exemption to Title IX, alleging that it “permits the Department to breach its duty as to the more than 100,000 sexual and gender minority students attending religious colleges and universities where discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation and gender identity is codified in campus policies and openly practiced.”

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February 2, 2025 in Faith, Legal Ed Scholarship, Legal Education, Scholarship | Permalink

Judge Orders LSU To Reinstate Law Prof Removed From Teaching Due To Political Comments In Class

Following up on Wednesday's post, Tenured Law Prof Sues LSU For Removing Him From Teaching After Allegedly Saying ‘F*** Trump’ In Class:  Louisiana Illuminator, Judge orders LSU to reinstate law Professor Sidelined for Political Comments:

LSU LevyA state judge has ordered LSU to allow its law professor Ken Levy to return to teaching duties. The university had removed Levy from the classroom pending an investigation into alleged criticism of Gov. Jeff Landry.

Levy, a tenured professor of constitutional and criminal law, sued the university earlier this week, saying it violated his First Amendment rights and its own policies regarding tenured faculty.

Judge Don Johnson of the 19th Judicial District granted Levy’s request for a temporary restraining order that would allow him to return to the classroom for at least the next week. Johnson set a hearing for an injunction on Feb. 10. Read the judge’s order below.

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February 2, 2025 in Legal Ed News, Legal Education | Permalink

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 #5:

  1. SSRN Logo (2018)[383 Downloads]  The Quiet Evolution In International Tax: Domestic Law And Double Taxation, by Craig Elliffe (University of Auckland; Google Scholar)
  2. [250 Downloads]  A Roadmap to NIL and Taxation, by Doron Narotzki (Akron; Google Scholar) & Yariv Brauner (Florida; Google Scholar)
  3. [231 Downloads]  Tax Treaties Do Not Protect Overseas Americans, by Laura Snyder (Association of Americans Resident Overseas), Karen Alpert (FixTheTaxTreaty.org) & John Richardson (TaxResidentAbroad.com)
  4. [223 Downloads]  Sustainable Tax Governance: A Shared Responsibility, by Hans Gribnau (Tilburg)
  5. [163 Downloads]  The Legality of Charitable Remedial Discrimination, by Roger Colinvaux (Catholic University)

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

February 2, 2025 in Scholarship, Tax, Tax Daily, Tax Scholarship, Top 5 Downloads | Permalink

Saturday, February 1, 2025

This Week's Ten Most Popular TaxProf Blog Posts

Top Ten 2Legal Education: 

  1. Chronicle of Higher Education, Trump Targets 131 Colleges (74 With Law Schools) With Endowments Over $1 Billion For Possible DEI Investigations
  2. WAFB, Tenured Law Prof Sues LSU For Removing Him From Teaching After Allegedly Saying ‘F*** Trump’ In Class
  3. Reuters, Trump's Hiring Freeze Leaves Thousands Of Law Students (And Some Law Schools' Employment Outcomes And Rankings) Out In The Cold
  4. Case Western Law School, First U.S. Law School To Require Legal AI Certification For All 1Ls
  5. Paul Caron (Dean, Pepperdine), Fellowships For Aspiring Law Professors (Updated 2025 Edition)
  6. Washington Post, A Tenured Columbia Law Prof Criticized Israeli Students. It Put Her Job At Risk.
  7. New York Times, SMU Wants To Separate From The Church But Keep ‘Methodist’ In Its Name
  8. ABA Journal, February California Bar Exam Will Proceed As Scheduled, But Examinees Impacted By L.A. Wildfires Can Request A Refund 
  9. Paul Caron (Dean, Pepperdine), Legal Ed News Roundup
  10. Scott Fruehwald, Weekly Legal Education Roundup

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

Tax:

  1. Georgia Law School, Victoria Haneman Leaves Creighton For Chair At Georgia
  2. Calvin Johnson, Texas, Mr. Musk: Cut A Trillion Dollars Of Government Fat Out Of Tax Expenditures (Bloomberg)
  3. Sarah Lawsky (Northwestern) & Leandra Lederman (Indiana-Maurer), Presentation Of Deductions’ Limits At Missouri-Columbia
  4. NYU, Tax Law Review Publishes New Issue
  5. SSRN, The Top Five New Tax Papers
  6. Paul Caron (Dean, Pepperdine), Next Week’s Tax Workshops
  7. Edward Fox (Michigan) & Zachary Liscow (Yale), The Role Of Unrealized Gains And Borrowing In The Taxation Of The Rich
  8. Theodore Tannenwald, Jr. Foundation, 2024 Tannenwald Tax Writing Competition Winners
  9. Michelle Hanlon (MIT) & Jeffrey Hoopes (North Carolina), The Pharmaceutical Industry’s Effective Tax Rates Before And After The TCJA
  10. Jeff Gordon (Yale), Presentation Of Carbon Accounting As Tax Law At Georgetown

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

Faith:

  1. David French (New York Times), Why Are So Many Christians So Cruel?
  2. preLaw, 2025 Religious Law School Rankings
  3. Peter Savodnik (The Free Press), How Intellectuals Found God
  4. Liberty University, Tax Prof Tim Todd Named Dean Of Liberty Law School
  5. Ruth Graham (New York Times), SMU Wants To Separate From The Church But Keep ‘Methodist’ In Its Name
    Alexandra Hudson (Christianity Today), It’s Time For A New Era Of Christian Civility

Editor's Note:  If you would like to receive a weekly email each Sunday with links to faith posts on TaxProf Blog, email me here

February 1, 2025 in About This Blog, Faith, Legal Education, Tax, Weekly Top 10 TaxProf Blog Posts | Permalink

Lawless: The Miseducation Of America's Elites

Ilya Shapiro (Manhattan Institute), Lawless: The Miseducation of America's Elites (2025):

LawlessIn the past, Columbia Law School produced leaders like Franklin Delano Roosevelt and Ruth Bader Ginsburg. Now, it produces window-smashing activists.

What happens when America’s top law schools stop believing in legal education?When protestors at Columbia broke into a building and created illegal encampments, the student-led Columbia Law Review demanded that finals be canceled because of “distress.” At Stanford, chanting activists, egged on by an associate dean, drove away a federal judge. Yale’s hostility to free speech led more than a dozen federal judges to boycott the school for clerkship hiring.

Law schools used to teach students how to think critically, advance logical arguments, and respect opponents. Now, those students cannot tolerate disagreement and reject the validity of the law itself. And yet, rioting Ivy Leaguers are the same people who will hold important government positions, fight constitutional lawsuits, and advise Fortune 500 companies.

In Lawless, Ilya Shapiro explains how we got here and what we can do about it. The problem is bigger than radical students and biased faculty—it’s institutional weakness. Shapiro met the mob firsthand when he posted a controversial tweet that led to calls for his firing from Georgetown Law. A four-month investigation eventually cleared him on a technicality. but declared that if he offended anyone in future, he’d create a “hostile educational environment” and be subject to the inquisition again. Not being able to do the job he was hired for, he resigned.

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February 1, 2025 in Book Club, Legal Ed Scholarship, Legal Education | Permalink

Brian Galle Awarded Named Professorship At Georgetown

Five Georgetown Law Faculty Members Honored With Named Professorships:

The Georgetown Law community gathered on Jan. 15 to celebrate the achievements of five faculty members who were awarded named professorships.

Dean William M. Treanor, the Paul Regis Dean Leadership Chair, welcomed each honoree to the stage to present a medal and read a citation highlighting their scholarship and other accomplishments. The ceremony was the final installation Treanor will preside over as dean, having announced last year that he will step down from his position in June and become a full-time faculty member.

“These celebrations are always a highlight for me and serve as yet another reminder of how extraordinary our faculty and community truly are,” said Treanor, who has overseen the creation of 54 named professorships during his 15-year tenure.

The Law Center’s newest named professors are:

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February 1, 2025 in Legal Ed News, Legal Education, Tax, Tax Daily, Tax News, Tax Prof Moves | Permalink

Friday, January 31, 2025

Weekly SSRN Tax Article Review And Roundup: Narotzki Reviews Adams's Did The OECD Help Reduce Multinationals' Income Shifting?

This week, Doron Narotzki (Akron; Google Scholar) reviews Jillian R. Adams (Toronto; Google Scholar), Did the OECD Help Reduce Multinationals' Income Shifting?.

Doron narotski

Adams analyzes the effect of the OECD’s BEPS framework action items on multinational corporations’ (MNCs) tax-motivated income shifting, going beyond prior research that has mostly focused on disclosure-based measures by evaluating the full set of 15 BEPS action items. To provide a broader empirical context, Adams first examines general income shifting trends from 2010 to 2021 using a global sample of MNCs. She applies the affiliate-level income shifting model developed by Hines & Rice (1994) and Huizinga & Laeven (2008) to assess how income shifting evolved over time before examining the specific effects of BEPS action items​. In order to quantify the direct impact of BEPS, Adams modifies this income shifting model for a difference-in-differences (DiD) research design, which allows her to separate the causal effects of BEPS from other economic trends​. 

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January 31, 2025 in Doron Narotzki, Scholarship, Tax, Tax Daily, Tax Scholarship, Weekly SSRN Roundup | Permalink