Next Week’s Tax Workshop

Tuesday, December 6: James Repetti (Boston College; Google Scholar) will present International Tax Policy, Manufacturing, and U.S. National Interests as part of the Boston College Tax Law Policy Workshop:

Two tax regulations that permit U.S. multinational enterprises (MNEs) to use foreign contract manufacturers and to disregard their wholly owned foreign subsidiaries have created significant tax incentives for MNEs to move manufacturing outside the U.S. These tax incentives have contributed to the loss of 5 million manufacturing jobs, the closure of more than 91,000 plants, and a decline in domestic production since 1997. These declines have increased inequality and political instability, and have decreased U.S. national security and research and development efforts to improve production techniques. Given these harms, it makes little sense to allow these incentives to remain in our tax system.

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Blue J Predicts: The Economic Substance Doctrine And Excise Tax Credits Related To Alcohol-Fuel Mixtures

Benjamin Alarie (Osler Chair in Business Law, University of Toronto; CEO, Blue J Legal) & Christopher Yan (Senior Legal Research Associate, Blue J Legal), Chemoil: Economic Substance, Tax Credits, and Unprofitable Ventures, 177 Tax Notes Fed. 719 (Oct. 31, 2022):

In this article, Alarie and Yan analyze the economic substance arguments in Chemoil, an ongoing refund suit involving otherwise unprofitable sales of an alcohol-fuel mixture for which the taxpayer was denied excise tax credits under section 6426.

In this month’s Blue J Predicts column, we examine the parties’ economic substance arguments in the ongoing litigation in Chemoil. The case involves tax refunds denied by the IRS for excise tax credits related to alcohol-fuel mixtures. The topic discussed in Chemoil bears a close relationship to last month’s installment of Blue J Predicts, in which we correctly predicted that the D.C. Circuit in Cross Refined Coal would rule for the taxpayer, holding that a business venture that was guaranteed to be unprofitable pretax (and became profitable only after tax credits) could still be considered a bona fide partnership for federal income tax purposes. Similarly, the Chemoil dispute provides an opportunity to explore the relationship between the economic substance doctrine and unprofitable transactions that are rendered economically viable by tax credits.

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Judges Leading Boycott Of Yale Law School Note Positive Free Speech Developments

Following up on yesterday's post, Yale Hosts Discussion Tonight On 'Is Free Speech Dead On Campus?' With Federal Judges Leading Boycott Of Yale Law School:  Yale Daily News, Course Correction Underway at Yale Law, Boycotting Judges Say:

Around 80 students crammed into an unassuming Harkness Hall classroom Wednesday afternoon to hear from the two figures largely responsible for Yale Law School’s widespread media attention in recent months.

Judges James C. Ho and Elizabeth Branch, both prominent conservative appointees of former president Donald Trump, made headlines when they publicly announced they would no longer be hiring clerks from Yale Law School.

On Wednesday, the boycotting duo engaged in a discussion about free speech on college campuses moderated by law professor Akhil Reed Amar, whom Ho singled out as a personal friend at the beginning of his remarks.

“Cancel culture is a cancer on our culture,” Ho said in his opening statement to the room. “And we need to cure it before it’s too late.”

Branch also confirmed to the News that she and Ho would be attending a panel organized by Yale Law School administration at the beginning of next year. She went on to explain that the invitation to the panel made no reference to her and Ho’s boycott. ...

Both Ho and Branch acknowledged “positive improvements” in the climate around speech at Yale Law. Ho specifically singled out a Federalist Society discussion featuring former Texas Solicitor General Jonathan Mitchell earlier this month. ...

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Women, Retirement, And The Growing Gig Economy Workforce

Caroline Bruckner (American-Kogod; Google Scholar) & Jonathan B. Forman (Oklahoma), Women, Retirement, and the Growing Gig Economy Workforce, 38 Ga. St. U. L. Rev. 259 (2022): 

Gig work—the selling or renting of labor, effort, skills, and time outside of traditional employment—is a long-standing feature of the U.S. economy. Today, millions of “online gig workers” sell goods and services, or rent rooms, houses, vehicles, and other assets using apponline and app-based platforms (for example, Uber, Lyft, Rover, DoorDash, eBay, Etsy, Postmates, VRBO, and Airbnb) to connect with customers. Millions more of “offline gig workers” run errands; walk dogs; care for children and the elderly; do housework, yardwork, and other occasional jobs; rent rooms; and sell goods at outdoor markets and roadside stands—without using online platforms to connect with their customers. This Article focuses on gig work in terms of what it means for women, their work, and their retirement income security. 

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An Access And Equity Ranking Of America's 63 Public Law Schools

Christopher L. Mathis (Iowa; Google Scholar), An Access and Equity Ranking of Public Law Schools, 74 Rutgers U.L. Rev. 677 (2022):

Over the past few decades, several comprehensive ranking systems, including the influential U.S. News and World Report’s Best Law Schools rankings, have emerged to provide useful information to prospective law students seeking to enroll in law school. These ranking systems have defined what is measured as “quality” and what outcomes law schools focus on to gain a better position in the ranking. These rankings fail to measure what many law schools claim to be one of their longstanding goals— diversity, access, and equity.

One of the problematic and shocking reasons U.S. News cites for not including diversity measures in the ranking is that law schools themselves have no consensus on diversity. I counter this argument, asserting that while there may not be widespread consensus—for certain people—on diversity, there is substantial academic scholarship and agreement on the tenets of diversity that ranking enthusiasts can use to design an effective diversity measure. I maintain that any ranking that does not include diversity, access, and equity measures often leave communities of color and their interests in the margins. Therefore, this Article seeks to center the needs of Black and Latinx prospective law students through a new ranking system

Given that public law schools aim to increase racial/ethnic diversity—that is, the number of racial/ethnic minoritized students—because of their institutional missions, the Article provides the first ranking of public law schools on “Access and Equity” measures. It describes ranking law schools based on measurable outcomes related to diversity, access, and equity. This ranking uses twelve access and equity measures that are significant to Black and Latinx law school fit. This “Access and Equity Ranking” is the only ranking to date that will help Black and Latinx students identify which public law schools centers their needs.

The Top 25 law schools under this measure are:

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Genre, Ideological Closure, And The Earned Income Tax Credit

Diane Kemker (Southern), “Cracking Open” the Tax Casebook: Genre, Ideological Closure, and the Earned Income Tax Credit:

The Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC) is a large federal grant program that operates as a “negative income tax” for America’s poorest working taxpayers. It also attracts a grossly disproportionate share of IRS enforcement attention, under audit policies that disparately impact poor Black families and communities. One might think that a topic like this, a credit claimed by tens of millions of American taxpayers every year and resulting in hundreds of thousands of audits, would receive robust coverage in the casebooks from which basic federal income tax courses are typically taught in law school. But in three leading casebooks, including one that is over 1000 pages in length and another that expressly states an intention to address race and gender issues in tax law, the entire treatment of the EITC takes up no more than a page or two.

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Wash U Joins Chicago And Cornell In Refusing To Boycott U.S. News Law School Rankings

Law.com, No. 16-Ranked Washington University Law Says It Will Not Bail on the US News Rankings:

On Tuesday, 16th-ranked Washington University in St. Louis School of Law joined 12th-ranked Cornell Law School and third-ranked University of Chicago Law School to continue providing information to U.S. News, amid a dozen law schools who have decided to pull out.

Russell K. Osgood, dean and professor of law at the law school, sent a statement to Law.com expressing his intentions to not withdraw from the rankings.

“Prospective law students should have multiple robust sources of information about law schools, and I am generally in favor of making information available,” Osgood said. “School websites can be incomplete, misleading or simply hard to compare.”

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OECD: 2021 Tax Revenue Increase Was Second-Largest Since 1990

OECD, Tax Revenues Rebounded as Economies Recovered From the COVID-19 Pandemic:

Revenue Statistics 2022, which presents tax revenue data for the second year of the COVID-19 pandemic, shows that the OECD average tax-to-GDP ratio rose by 0.6 percentage points (p.p.) in 2021, to 34.1%, the second-strongest year-on-year increase since 1990. The report also shows that tax-to-GDP ratios increased in 24 of the 36 OECD countries for which 2021 data on tax revenues was available, declined in 11 and remained unchanged in one.

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More Commentary On The ABA's Push To Make The LSAT Optional In Law School Admissions

Yale Daily News, With LSAT in Limbo, Yale Law Students Divided on Test’s Merits:

Law schools across the country may soon stop requiring the LSAT for admissions, pending a decision by the American Bar Association.

The policy change, which would go into effect in the fall of 2025, would strike the requirement that law schools use the test to receive accreditation. Yale Law School has not indicated whether it would continue to require the LSAT in the absence of a mandate. ...

Yale Law School currently boasts the country’s highest median LSAT score in a three-way tie with Harvard and Columbia.

Some Yale students voiced concerns about axing the requirement, claiming that the LSAT was one of the most meritocratic aspects of the admissions process. Others heralded the decision.

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Puckett: An Egalitarian Approach Against Taxing Couples As A Unit

James M. Puckett (Penn State-University Park; Google Scholar), Facing the Sunset: An Egalitarian Approach against Taxing Couples as a Unit, 55 Loy. L. A. L. Rev. 477 (2022): 

With the sunset of marriage penalty relief in 2025, Congress has a bittersweet opportunity to align the taxable unit with the guiding norm of taxation according to “ability to pay.” The federal income tax brackets have been designed around a misguided and poorly targeted assumption that comparing married couples is appropriate, whether because of pooling income, economies of scale, or untaxed housework and caregiving. This Article argues that the individual, rather than (married) couples, should emerge as the unit for income taxation under an egalitarian approach to distributive justice.

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Yale Hosts Discussion Tonight On 'Is Free Speech Dead On Campus?' With Federal Judges Leading Boycott Of Yale Law School

Yale Daily News, Buckley Program to Host Judges Boycotting Yale Law School:

Federal judges leading a boycott against Yale Law School will soon arrive on campus at the invitation of Yale’s primary conservative student organization.

The Nov. 30 discussion, titled “Is Free Speech Dead on Campuses?”, will be hosted by the William F. Buckley Jr. Program in William L. Harkness Hall. The speakers, Judges James C. Ho and Elizabeth Branch, announced their decision to bar future graduates of Law School from their clerkships over concerns about the institution’s culture around free speech in September. The event will be moderated by law professor Akhil Amar ’80 LAW ’84.

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How Four Decades Of Tax Cuts Fueled Inequality

Bloomberg Tax:  How Four Decades of Tax Cuts Fueled Inequality, by James B. Steele (Center for Public Integrity):

As a dense fog rolled over his California ranch, Ronald Reagan strolled to a table set up outside his adobe farmhouse and flashed photographers a radiant smile.

The president had much to smile about. Stacked on the table, awaiting his signature, was ERTA, the 185-page Economic Recovery Tax Act of 1981 that fulfilled his campaign promise to cut taxes in a big way.

The beneficiaries were largely high-net-worth individuals and corporations. What followed was a $750 billion hole in the federal budget, cuts in multiple public programs and a ballooning deficit.

But that was just the beginning. The bill signing on that foggy day set in motion a trend in tax policy that is supercharging America’s escalating income inequality. In the past four decades, Congress after Congress has cut taxes on the richest people and corporations —billions of dollars that would otherwise have gone to the federal till for spending that could help the rest of the public get ahead.

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Eight Years After Splitting Law School Between Two Locations, Penn State President Proposes Reunification In Carlisle To Help Close Budget Deficit

Penn State News, President Bendapudi Recommends Reuniting Penn State’s Two Law Schools:

President Neeli Bendapudi is recommending that Penn State reunite its two separately accredited law schools, Penn State Dickinson Law in Carlisle and Penn State Law at University Park, into a single law school. The united school would be called Penn State Dickinson Law, have its primary location in Carlisle, and be led by Penn State Dickinson Law Dean Danielle M. Conway.

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Avi-Yonah: Fixing Tax Law's APA Problem

Reuven S. Avi-Yonah (Michigan; Google Scholar), Fixing Tax Law's APA Problem, 177 Tax Notes Fed. 981 (Nov. 14, 2022):

In this article, Avi-Yonah examines the post-Mayo revolution that has occurred in the application of the Administrative Procedure Act to tax regulations, and he offers two solutions to the problem of using notice and comment for those regs.

The APA Tax Revolution
Since the Supreme Court decided in Mayo that tax regulations are subject to the Administrative Procedure Act’s notice and comment procedures because they are not always interpretive rules (as Treasury had previously believed), there has been a revolution in applying the APA to tax regulations. In many cases, courts have declared tax regulations and notices invalid because they either did not follow proper APA notice and comment procedures, or did not adequately take into consideration adverse comments received during the procedure.

This revolution was led to a significant extent by one academic — professor Kristin Hickman of the University of Minnesota Law School — who has repeatedly argued that all tax regulations issued under section 7805 are legislative and therefore must be adopted through notice and comment [Coloring Outside the Lines: Examining Treasury's (Lack of) Compliance with Administrative Procedure Act Rulemaking Requirements, 82 Notre Dame L. Rev. 1727 (2007)].

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More Commentary On The U.S. News Law School Rankings Boycott

Nicholas Allard (Founding Dean, Jacksonville Law School), Law Schools Are Right To Steer Clear Of US News Rankings:

For many years my academic colleagues have tolerated the rankings while acknowledging their profound methodological flaws and describing their insidious effects. There is a mountainous record of critical commentary and analysis on the subject. Less substantively and perhaps too bluntly, I once said that "the rankings may be good for lining a parakeet cage, but as a roadmap for students they're not useful."

Bloomberg, Will Yale’s US News Exit Spur More Focus on Location?:

Chronicle of Higher Education, Can We Finally Topple The Tyranny of Rankings?:

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Kleiman Presents Impoverishment By Taxation And How American Governments Impoverish Their Own Today At NYU

Ariel Jurow Kleiman (Loyola-L.A.; Google Scholar) presents the following papers at NYU today as part of its Tax Policy and Public Finance Colloquium hosted by Daniel Shaviro: 

Impoverishment by Taxation, 170 U. Pa. L. Rev. ___ (2022)

Viewed in the aggregate, the U.S. fiscal system is progressive, reduces inequality, and cuts poverty. The system improves on market outcomes by transferring income from rich to poor. Yet this bird’s eye view rings hollow on the ground, where millions of low-income taxpayers across the United States are made poor or poorer by paying their state and federal taxes. In truth, while the U.S. fiscal system may be broadly equalizing and poverty reducing, for many struggling households, it is impoverishing.

This Article offers a new way to measure taxation of low-income households in the United States, presenting a concept called fiscal impoverishment.

Taxpayers are fiscally impoverished when they are made poor or poorer by paying state and federal taxes, after accounting for the offsetting cash or near-cash public benefits they receive. Distinct from the aggregate and anonymous measures by which we typically assess our tax and transfer system, fiscal impoverishment is dynamic and individualized. It highlights individual human dignity and implicates the economic responsibilities of the state vis-à-vis low-income taxpayers.

 

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Journal Of Legal Education Publishes New Double Issue

The Journal of Legal Education has published Vol. 70, No. 2 & 3 (Winter and Spring 2021):

From the Editors

• Robert Dinerstein (American), Jeremy R. Paul (Northeastern; Google Scholar), Sonia E. Rolland (Northeastern), & Ezra Rosser (American; Google Scholar), From the Editors, 70 J. Legal Educ. 203 (2021)

Articles

• Cass R. Sunstein (Harvard; Google Scholar), Self-Silencing and Online Learning, 70 J. Legal Educ. 205 (2021)
• Danielle M. Conway (Penn State-Dickinson), Embracing and Making Change in Legal Education: Serving the Law Students of Today and Tomorrow, 70 J. Legal Educ. 215 (2021)
• Nina A. Kohn (Syracuse), Teaching Law Online: A Guide for Faculty, 70 J. Legal Educ. 230 (2021)
• Yvonne M. Dutton (Indiana-McKinney) & Margaret Ryznar (Brooklyn), Law School Pedagogy Post-Pandemic: Harnessing the Benefits of Online Teaching, 70 J. Legal Educ. 252 (2021)
• Audrey Fried (Osgoode Hall), Using a Community of Inquiry Framework to Make the Transition to Teaching Law Online, 70 J. Legal Educ. 274 (2021)
• William S. Blatt (Miami), The Power of Presence in Socratic Teaching: The Effect of Substituting Videoconferencing for In-Person Classes, 70 J. Legal Educ. 284 (2021)
• Andrele Brutus St. Val (Pittsburgh), Survey Says—How to Engage Law Students in the Online Learning Environment, 70 J. Legal Educ. 297 (2021)
• Sarah Fishel (Ithaca), David DeMatteo (Drexel; Google Scholar) & Kellie Wiltsie (J.D./Ph.D. Candidate, Drexel), Certainly Uncertain: Facilitating Law Student Professional Growth and Well-Being Through Supervision in Light of COVID-19, 70 J. Legal Educ. 331 (2021)
• A. Michael Froomkin (Miami; Google Scholar), The Virtual Law School, 2.0, 70 J. Legal Educ. 348 (2021)
• Christian Powell Sundquist (Pittsburgh; Google Scholar), Technology and the (Re)Construction of Law, 70 J. Legal Educ. 402 (2021)
• Richard K. Neumann Jr. (Hofstra), Violations During the Pandemic of Law School Faculties’ Authority to Decide Methods of Instruction, 70 J. Legal Educ. 413 (2021)
• Michael A. Mogill (Penn State-Dickinson), We Are...Community!, 70 J. Legal Educ. 459 (2021)

At the Lectern

• Daniel Keating (Washington University), Finding New Classroom Tricks in a Virtual Teaching World: One ‘Old Dog’s’ Tale, 70 J. Legal Educ. 462 (2021)

Book Reviews

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Wilking Presents Tax Incidence With Heterogeneous Firm Evasion Today At Boston College

Eleanor Wilking (Cornell) presents Tax Incidence with Heterogeneous Firm Evasion: Evidence from Airbnb Remittance Agreements at Boston College today as part of its Tax Policy Workshop hosted by Hugh Ault, Ray Madoff, Beverley Moran, Shuyi Oei, Jim Repetti, Diane Ring, and Steve Shay:

How does the obligation to remit affect consumption tax incidence? In classical tax theory, assigning the responsibility to transfer tax revenue to the government has no effect on which party bears the economic burden of a consumption tax. I explore this prediction in the context of agreements between city governments and a large digital platform firm that shifted the obligation to remit hotel taxes from independent renters to the platform firm itself. Using variation in the location and timing of these agreements, I identify a substantial increase in advertised tax-inclusive rental prices—a violation of remittance invariance—but comparatively modest declines in completed reservations. A contemporaneous increase in hotel tax revenue collections suggests that the policy was an effective tax increase, assessed on previously non-compliant renters. I explore heterogeneity in pass through of this effective tax increase using several proxies for renter price-setting sophistication. Pass-through was lowest among full-space, frequent renters who likely faced smaller optimization frictions relative to more amateur renters. My results indicate that shifting the remittance obligation to the platform increases after-tax prices and raises revenue, suggesting that consumers bear a greater share of the tax burden when the remittance obligation is shifted to a party with fewer evasion opportunities.

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UC-Davis Is 12th Law School (5th In California) To Boycott U.S. News Rankings

Kevin R. Johnson (Dean, U.C. Davis), UC Davis Law Withdraws From U.S. News & World Report Rankings:

Beginning today (Nov. 28), UC Davis School of Law will no longer provide data to U.S. News & World Report for use in compiling its law school rankings. This decision has been made after receiving guidance from the law faculty, campus leadership, students, alumni and others.

Major flaws with the U.S. News rankings are well-documented. Although law schools have in good faith worked with the magazine on improvements, U.S. News has failed to meaningfully change the rankings methodology. The survey techniques, accuracy and fairness of the rankings remain problematic, which produces a misleading ranking of law schools. Even small changes in one variable can lead to a dramatic shake-up of the rankings. The regular “corrections” of the rankings by U.S. News show their volatility and undermine their legitimacy.

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CBO Data: After-Tax, After-Transfer Income Inequality Has Been Flat Since 2000

Timothy T. Taylor (Macalester College), Income Inequality for US Households:

CBO has just published The Distribution of Household Income, 2019 (November 2022). ... A good chunk of the underlying data behind this report is from income tax data. This data has the great advantage that is isn’t from a survey asking people about their incomes, but is from what people actually filed with the Internal Revenue Service, with in turn is cross-checked with data from employers, financial institutions, and other types of income (like royalty payments). ...

The real strength of the report is not that it is up to the minute, but rather that it offers a snapshot in time along with useful sense of trends in income inequality since the late 1970s, when it began to rise. Here are a few of the graphs that caught my eye. ...

Here’s the trend in average federal taxes paid at the top of the income distribution in the last 40 years or so. You will notice that while the subject has been the source of considerable political controversy, the ups and downs have pretty much levelled out over time.

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UC-Davis Dean Kevin Johnson Receives Inaugural AALS Michael Olivas Award

AALS, UC Davis Dean Kevin R. Johnson Awarded Inaugural Olivas Award from Five AALS Sections:

Kevin R. Johnson, Dean and Mabie-Apallas Professor of Public Interest Law and Chicana/o Studies at University of California, Davis School of Law, is the inaugural recipient of the Michael A. Olivas Award for Outstanding Leadership in Diversity and Mentoring in the Legal Academy, a joint recognition by five sections of the Association of American Law Schools (AALS).

“I am incredibly honored to receive this award,” Johnson said. “I am especially touched because Michael was a friend, colleague, and an important mentor to me. He was a brilliant, prophetic scholar, and a risk-taking and pathbreaking advocate for underrepresented groups in the legal academy, and the world. I am extremely grateful to be the first recipient of the Michael A. Olivas Award.”

The annual award serves as a memorial to Michael A. Olivas, who died in April 2022 after an illustrious career in law, most recently as William B. Bates Distinguished Chair in Law Emeritus at the University of Houston Law Center and the Director of the University of Houston’s Institute for Higher Education Law & Governance. In 2018, Olivas was awarded the AALS Triennial Award for Lifetime Service to Legal Education and the Law, the association’s highest honor.

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Vella Presents Pillar 2’s Impact On Tax Competition Today At UC-Irvine

John Vella (Oxford) presents Pillar 2’s Impact on Tax Competition (with Michael P. Devereux (Oxford; Google Scholar) & Heydon Wardell-Burrus (Oxford)) at UC-Irvine today as part of its Tax Policy Colloquium: 

The Two-Pillar Solution agreed by 137 countries on 8 October 2021 has been hailed as “historic” and a “a once-in-a-generation accomplishment for economic diplomacy.” To a significant extent, this is due to the expected impact of Pillar 2 (essentially a global minimum tax) on tax competition among states. This paper examines Pillar 2’s impact on tax competition. It builds on a short policy brief released by the authors in January 2022 in which the main incentives created by Pillar 2 that are relevant to tax competition were first identified.

The paper is divided into 7 sections. Section 1 introduces the paper. Section 2 discusses Pillar 2’s objectives: addressing profit shifting and tax competition. Section 3 discusses the Top-Up Tax calculation under Pillar 2, with a particular focus on the “Substance Based Income Inclusion” and the “Qualified Domestic Minimum Top-up Tax” (QDMTT) variables. Section 4 sets out three main conclusions on Pillar 2’s impact on tax competition. 

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Legal Ed News Roundup

• ABA Journal, More Top Law Schools Boycott US News Rankings, but Some Lower-Ranked Institutions Are Reluctant to Withdraw
• Cornell Daily Sun. Dean Jens Ohlin Says Cornell Law Will Not Withdraw from U.S. News Rankings
• James Forman Jr. (Yale), 3 Reasons Yale Law Was Right to Quit the U.S. News Rankings
• Dale Kwarciany (J.D. 1976, Cleveland State Law School), John Marshall’s Name Should Not Have Been Removed, but ‘CSU Law School’ Is Best Alternative
• Law.com, Cornell Law Will Continue to Participate in US News Rankings
• Law.com, Fourth California Law School Withdraws From US News Rankings
• Law.com, Northwestern Law Becomes 8th T14 to Bail on US News Rankings
• Law.com, The US News Law School Rankings Fallout

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Call For Papers: 2023 Tax Notes Student Writing Competition

Tax Notes Student Writing Competition:

The 2023 submission period for the Tax Notes Student Writing Competition is now open! Each year we recognize superior student writing on unsettled questions in tax law or policy. Learn more about the competition guidelines:

• Eligibility: The competition is open to any student enrolled in a law, business, or public policy program during the 2022-2023 academic year. Each student may submit only one paper. Coauthored papers will be accepted. 
• Format: Entries should be a minimum of 2,500 words and a maximum of 12,000 words, including footnotes. Citations should be formatted as footnotes in accordance with the latest edition of The Bluebook: A Uniform System of Citation. Bibliographies and reference lists are prohibited. Articles should be submitted as Microsoft Word documents.

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Yale Law School’s Revolt Of The Elites

The New Republic, Yale Law School’s Revolt of the Elites:

Yale University has the most elite law school in America, an institution so central to the production of future Supreme Court clerks and legal bigwigs that, in the space of a few months last year, The New York Times, The Atlantic, and The New Yorker all published lengthy features about whether one of its professors served drinks to students at a dinner party. So it made the news last week when Yale Law School Dean Heather K. Gerken issued a public statement declaring that the school would no longer willingly participate in the influential U.S. News & World Report law school rankings, setting off a mini-cascade of righteous quitting as Harvard, University of California, Berkeley, Stanford, Georgetown, and Columbia quickly followed suit.

But there was something strange about the spectacle of Dean Gerken denouncing as “profoundly flawed” a rankings system that identifies Yale itself as the #1 law school in the country—an evaluation with which, one would assume, she wholeheartedly agrees. The other quitters share rarefied air as well: All are in the U.S. News top 14 [except for UCLA and UC-Irvine].

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Satterthwaite: Understanding Self-Employment Trends In Tax Data

Emily Satterthwaite (Georgetown; Google Scholar), What's Going on With Self-Employment? (JOTWELL) (reviewing Andrew Garin (Illinois; Google Scholar), Emilie Jackson (Michigan State; Google Scholar) & Dmitri Koustas (Chicago; Google Scholar), New Gig Work or Changes in Reporting? Understanding Self-Employment Trends in Tax Data):

Are there more self-employed people, or not? IRS data shows a significant increase in the portion of the workforce reporting positive net income from self-employment on their tax returns. It rose by about 20 percent after 2000, peaking in 2014 at just under 12 percent. However, annual labor force surveys suggest that the self-employment rate has been flat since 2000. How can these two results be reconciled? This question motivates a terrific new paper by Andrew Garin, Emilie Jackson, and Dmitri Koustas entitled, New Gig Work or Changes in Reporting? Understanding Self-Employment Trends in Tax Data. ...

The correlation between reporting more self-employment income and eligibility for larger refundable tax credits could mean either a real labor supply response (individuals actually working more in a self-employed capacity) or a pure reporting response, whether related to fake or real self-employment income.

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Here’s Why Top Law Schools May Be Pulling Out Of The U.S. News Rankings

Following up on Saturday's post, Law School Admissions Without LSATs, Race, And Rankings:  The Daily Caller, ‘Writing On The Wall’: Here’s Why Top US Universities May Be Pulling Out Of High-Profile Ranking System:

Top law school[s] ... may be dropping out of the rankings ahead of the U.S. Supreme Court’s ruling on affirmative action because they plan to deemphasize standardized tests in the admissions process and preserve diversity, but do not want to fall in the rankings process, experts told the Daily Caller News Foundation.

“If affirmative action falls, we can expect to see a lot of educational institutions drop objective standards from their admissions practices,” John Sailer, fellow at the National Association of Scholars, told the DCNF. “This allows them to continue race-conscious admissions by other means. Already, we see schools embracing this workaround. These top law schools probably have that in mind as they back out of the U.S. News & World Report rankings. Ranking requires clear, objective standards, and if law schools hope to go test-optional, the ranking system presents an obvious problem.” ...

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TaxProf Blog Holiday Weekend Roundup

Thanksgiving:

• Chicago And Cornell Are First Elite Law Schools To Refuse To Join U.S. News Rankings Boycott
• UC-Irvine Is First Non-Elite Law School To Join U.S. News Rankings Boycott
• NY Times Op-Ed: Even Your Political Enemies Deserve A Slice Of Thanksgiving Pie
• Pepperdine Caruso Law Is Thankful For Greg Ogden
• NY Times: Tax Prof Cruciverbalist
• A Wall Street Journal Thanksgiving

Friday:

• Weekly Legal Education Roundup
• Tax Policy In The Biden Administration
• Next Week’s Tax Workshops
• Is This The Beginning Of The End Of The U.S. News Rankings Dominance?
• The New And Decidedly Improved IRS 'Fact Sheet' Frequently Asked Questions
• NYU Seeks To Hire A Tax Law And Policy Fellow ($75,000-$88,000)

Saturday:

• This Week's Ten Most Popular TaxProf Blog Posts
• Law School Admissions Without LSATs, Race, And Rankings
• Treasury Department Seeks To Hire Deputy Assistant Secretary ($135,468 - $203,700)
• Penn Evaluates Whether To Join Boycott Of U.S. News Rankings By Ten Of Top 15 Law Schools

Sunday:

• David French: An Open Letter To Those Who Think I’ve Lost My Christian Faith Because I Support The Respect For Marriage Act
• Bono: 'Too Christian For The Mainstream, Too Mainstream For Christians?
• Auditing Scientology: Reexamining The Church's 501(c)(3) Tax Exemption Eligibility
• The Top Five New Tax Papers

David French: An Open Letter To Those Who Think I’ve Lost My Christian Faith Because I Support The Respect For Marriage Act

Following up on last Sunday's post, Christian Colleges And Universities Support Senate-Passed Bipartisan Respect For Marriage Act With Protections For Both LGBTQ Rights And Religious Freedom:  David French (The Dispatch), An Open Letter to Those Who Think I’ve Lost My Christian Faith:

It’s been an interesting few days. Ever since I wrote (first in The Atlantic and then on Sunday here in The Dispatch) in support of the Senate version of the Respect for Marriage Act, I’ve been subject to an absolute torrent of online criticism, mainly from fellow Christians. The culmination of the critiques came from Al Mohler, president of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, who took to the pages of World Magazine to pen a piece called “The Parable of David French.” 

“This is how conservatism dies,” he wrote. “This is how marriage is surrendered.”

That’s dramatic! But it’s not as extreme as other critiques, including those who questioned whether I am truly a Christian, who told me I should face church discipline, and who compared my support for the Respect for Marriage Act to support for slavery. I kid you not.

Whew. That’s a lot. It’s always a struggle to know when to keep addressing an argument and when to just move on, but given the continued attacks—now running into their sixth day—I think it’s important to go one more round. And this time I’m going to take a bit of a different approach. I’m going to address directly, from the ground up, why the debate is so confused and why the distinctions between Christian marriage (what I’ll call “covenant marriage”) and civil marriage matter so very much.

I’m particularly interested in the various allegations of apostasy, especially given my agreement with the orthodox creeds and confessions of the church, including doctrines relating to sex, sexuality, and sexual morality. In fact, in 2019, I signed the controversial Nashville Statement, in large part because I thought it was important for Christians to offer a clear statement of orthodox Christian theology on matters of sexual controversy.

The intent of the Nashville Statement, as I understood it, was not to write a model law for a secular state, but rather to clear up confusion in Christian churches about the basics of Christian doctrine. Despite its explicitly religious purpose, it is still very helpful to the debate because it clarifies where I think discussions over marriage often go so very wrong. 

Here’s the definition of marriage taken directly from the statement itself: Marriage is the “covenantal, sexual, procreative, lifelong union of one man and one woman, as husband and wife, and is meant to signify the covenant love between Christ and his bride the church.” Other faiths might have other definitions of marriage, but this is among the best Christian definitions I’ve read.

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Bono: 'Too Christian For The Mainstream, Too Mainstream For Christians?'

Christianity Today, Bono’s Punk-Rock

Grief and God have been part of U2’s story from the start.

We got this invitation once,” Bono tells me. He speaks the next sentence with a tone of reverence: “The Reverend Billy Graham would love to meet the band and offer a blessing.”

We’re on a video call, and the frontman for U2 is sitting on the floor in front of a green couch, his computer on the coffee table in front of him. It’s golden hour in Dublin, and the just-setting sun makes the room glow. It’s almost theatrical. There’s a twinkle in his eye, too. He knows he has a good story.

“He’s the founder of Christianity Today,” he reminds me, grinning. “I didn’t know that then, but I still wanted the blessing. And I was trying to convince the band into coming with me, but for various reasons they couldn’t. It was difficult with the schedule, but I just found a way.”

This was in March 2002, just a few weeks after U2 played their legendary Super Bowl halftime show and days after their single “Walk On” won the Grammy for Record of the Year.

“His son Franklin picked me up at the airport,” Bono says, “and Franklin was doing very effective work with Samaritan’s Purse. But he wasn’t sure about his cargo.” He laughs. “On the way to meet his father, he kept asking me questions.”

Bono reenacts the conversation for me:

“You … you really love the Lord?”
“Yep.”
“Okay, you do. Are you saved?”
“Yep, and saving.”
He doesn’t laugh. No laugh.
“Have you given your life? Do you know Jesus Christ as your personal Savior?”
“Oh, I know Jesus Christ, and I try not to use him just as my personal Savior. But, you know, yes.”
“Why aren’t your songs, um, Christian songs?”
“They are!”
“Oh, well, some of them are.”
“What do you mean?”
“Well, why don’t they … Why don’t we know they’re Christian songs?”
I said, “They’re all coming from a place, Franklin. Look around you. Look at the creation, look at the trees, look at the sky, look at these kinds of verdant hills. They don’t have a sign up that says, ‘Praise the Lord’ or ‘I belong to Jesus.’ They just give glory to Jesus.”

For four decades, Bono has found himself in conversations like this one, responding to Christians who aren’t quite sure what to make of him or U2. ...

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Auditing Scientology: Reexamining The Church's 501(c)(3) Tax Exemption Eligibility

Taylor C. Holley (J.D. 2022, Texas Tech), Comment, Auditing Scientology: Reexamining the Church's 501(c)(3) Tax Exemption Eligibility, 54 Tex. Tech L. Rev. 345 (2022): 

The Church of Scientology is one of the most discussed religions of the modern era, and its beliefs and practices have been shrouded in controversy since its emergence in the 1950’s. Shortly thereafter, the Internal Revenue Service recognized Scientology as a valid religious organization, thus granting certain governmental protections and benefits afforded to religious organizations in this country, including tax exemption. After a decades-long battle between the Church and the IRS, the IRS eventually granted a blanket tax exemption to all Scientology organizations under Section 501(c)(3) of the Internal Revenue Code.

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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 #1 paper and a new paper debuting on the list at #4:

1. [455 Downloads]  Federal Tax Procedure (2022 Practitioner Ed.), by John Townsend (Houston)
2. [407 Downloads]  Pillar Two and Developing Countries: The STTR and GloBE Implementation, by Heydon Wardell-Burrus (Oxford)
3. [289 Downloads]  A Wrench in the GLOBE's Diabolical Machinery, by Ruth Mason (Virginia; Google Scholar)
4. [247 Downloads]  Legal Structuring of Web Based Trading and Tax Complexities in Pakistan A Comparative Study, by Shan Ali (Bahria University Islamabad), Asadullah Muhmand (Bahria University Islamabad; Google Scholar) & Faheem Raza Khuhro (Boston University)
5. [196 Downloads]  VAT Goes Virtual: Security Tokens, by Joachim Englisch (Münster)

This Week's Ten Most Popular TaxProf Blog Posts

Legal Education:

1. Law Schools Boycotting U.S. News Rankings:
• Yale
• Stanford
• Harvard
• Columbia
• UC-Berkeley
• Michigan
• Duke
• Northwestern
• Georgetown
• UCLA
• UC-Irvine
2. Law Schools Not Boycotting U.S. News Rankings:
• Chicago
• Cornell (Maybe)
3. Daniel Crane (Michigan), Antitrust Implications Of The U.S. News Law School Rankings Boycott
4. Paul Caron (Dean, Pepperdine),  One-Third Of The Way Through The Fall 2023 Law School Admissions Season: Applicants Are Down -7.5%, With Biggest Decline (-21%) In The 165-169 LSAT Band
5. Press Release, ABA Legal Ed Council Votes 15-1 To Make LSAT Optional Beginning With Fall 2026 1L Class
6. Paul Caron (Dean, Pepperdine), The U.S. News Law School Rankings Are Like The Hotel California: You Can Check Out Any Time You Like, But You Can Never Leave
7. Bill Henderson (Indiana), The Dollars And Math Behind Yale Law School's Withdrawal From U.S. News — 'Are Limits on Federal Student Loans The Best Way To End The Rankings Madness?'
8. Paul Caron (Dean, Pepperdine), U.S. News Law School Rankings, ABA Optional LSAT, And Harvard Affirmative Action Supreme Court Case
9. Dan Solove (George Washington), Slaying The U.S. News Law School Rankings Dragon
10. Paul Caron (Dean, Pepperdine), Pepperdine Caruso Law Is Thankful For Greg Ogden

Tax:

1. Bryan Camp (Texas Tech), Lesson From The Tax Court: The Employer/Employee Gift Rule
2. Bryan Camp (Texas Tech), Lesson From The Tax Court: An Object Lesson For Tax Professionals
3. Michael Lukacs (EY, New York), Oren Margulies (EY, Washington, D.C.) & Lakshmi Jayanthi (EY Boston), Taxation Of NFT Transactions
4. Paul Caron (Dean, Pepperdine), Tax Policy In The Biden Administration
5. SSRN, The Top Five New Tax Papers
6. David Elkins (Netanya), Review 0f Victoria Plekhanova (Massey), Taxes Through the Reciprocity Lens
7. Reuven Avi-Yonah (Michigan), The Dangers Of Tax Textualism
8. Jeremy Bearer-Friend (George Washington), Ari Glogower (Northwestern), Ariel Jurow Kleiman (Loyola-L.A.), & Clinton Wallace (South Carolina), Taxation and Law and Political Economy
9. Charles Delmotte (NYU), The Promises and Pitfalls of a Blockchain Driven Tax System
10. Bryan Camp (Texas Tech), Lesson From The Tax Court: The Unforeseen Circumstances Rule For §121 Home Sale Exclusions

Law School Admissions Without LSATs, Race, And Rankings

Wall Street Journal Editorial, Law Schools Without LSATs:

The American Bar Association’s move to discard objective tests won’t enhance diversity.

The flight from merit continues across America, and it’s spreading fast in the legal profession. An arm of the American Bar Association (ABA), which accredits law schools, voted on Nov. 18 to end the requirement that prospective law students take the Law School Admission Test. ...

The vote is pending approval from the ABA House of Delegates in February. If adopted, it would make standardized testing optional in preparation for a career that demands a lot of standardized knowledge.

The LSAT has long been a target of diversity advocates who argue that the use of the test has limited minority enrollment in law schools because the test questions are allegedly biased in favor of white test takers. Detractors also object to the LSAT because affluent students often pay thousands of dollars to prepare for the test that is supposed to predict their first-year law school performance.

The ABA decision is best understood as an attempt to get ahead of a possible Supreme Court decision against the use of racial preferences in school admissions. By making the LSAT optional, schools will be able to admit the students they want without lowering the average LSAT score that is one measure of elite status. But the schools need the ABA to move first.

The irony is that giving up the LSAT is likely to harm students from less privileged backgrounds. In September, 60 law school deans—including Berkeley Dean Erwin Chemerinsky, Loyola University Chicago Dean Michèle Alexandre and Boston University’s Angela Onwuachi-Willig—wrote the ABA to oppose making the admissions test optional on grounds that it would damage diversity. ...

Without an LSAT, untested law students will arrive at law school less prepared for the material, as well as less experienced with a rigorous testing format when they have to pass the bar exam in a few years. That is, if critics don’t next target the bar exam for elimination.

Bloomberg Law Op-Ed:  Ending Standardized Law School Tests Could Diminish Diversity, by Erwin Chemerinsky (Dean, UC-Berkeley) & Daniel Tokaji (Dean, Wisconsin):

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Treasury Department Seeks To Hire Deputy Assistant Secretary ($135,468 - $203,700)

The U.S. Department of the Treasury is looking to hire a Deputy Assistant Secretary for Tax, Trade and Tariff Policy (application due November 30, 2022): 

Summary
The Deputy Assistant Secretary reports to the Assistant Secretary for Tax Policy and is responsible for providing oversight, coordination and policy direction for the Tax and Trade Bureau (TTB).

Duties
As the Deputy Assistant Secretary Tax Trade and Tariff Policy, you will:

• Supervise the TTB Administrator.
• Provide policy direction to TTB based on input from Treasury leadership, US Government leaders, TTB leaders, federal advisory committees, and external groups.
• Work with Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and Customs and Border Protection (CBP) leadership to develop customs policies; provide policy guidance to DHS on issues related to revenue and regulation of trade for economic purposes.

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Penn Evaluates Whether To Join Boycott Of U.S. News Rankings By Ten Of Top 15 Law Schools

Daily Pennsylvanian, Penn Carey Law Evaluating Participation in U.S. News & World Report Rankings After Harvard, Yale Pull Out:

Spokesperson Meredith Rovine wrote in a statement to The Daily Pennsylvanian that Penn Carey Law “applauds Yale Law and Harvard Law for their leadership in raising key questions for all law schools,” and agrees that the rankings are not holistic. ...

“Penn Carey Law has substantially increased financial aid and support for students seeking public interest careers to meet these important needs. We are evaluating this issue and assessing a process for our own decision-making,” Penn Carey Law's statement said.

“The U.S. News algorithm severely undercounts money spent on financial aid for students, while fully rewarding schools for every dollar spent on faculty and administrator salaries,” Penn Carey Law’s statement read.

Philadelphia Inquirer, Penn Will Evaluate U.S. News Rankings in Light of Harvard and Yale’s Decision to Withdraw:

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Weekly Legal Education Roundup

• ABA Journal, More top law schools boycott US News rankings, but some lower-ranked institutions are reluctant to withdraw
• ABA Press Release, ABA Panel Takes First Step to Revise the Requirement for Law School Admission Tests
• Paul Caron (Dean, Pepperdine),  One-Third Of The Way Through The Fall 2023 Law School Admissions Season: Applicants Are Down -7.5%, With Biggest Decline (-21%) In The 165-169 LSAT Band
• Paul Caron (Dean, Pepperdine), Pepperdine Caruso Law Is Thankful For Greg Ogden
• Paul Caron (Dean, Pepperdine), U.S. News Law School Rankings, ABA Optional LSAT, And Harvard Affirmative Action Supreme Court Case
• Chronicle of Higher Education, Is This The Beginning Of The End Of The U.S. News Rankings Dominance?

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Tax Policy In The Biden Administration

• Bloomberg, Child Tax Credit Expansion Would Shrink the Racial Wealth Gap
• Bloomberg, How Fidelity Investments Built America’s Biggest Charity
• Bloomberg, IRS Crypto Tax Criminal Cases Bolstered by John Doe Summonses
• Bloomberg, When Taxes Collide: Can Book Tax, Global Minimum Tax Play Nice?
• Boston Globe Editorial, Republicans Should Leave the IRS Budget Alone

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Next Week’s Tax Workshops

Monday, November 28: John Vella (Oxford) will present Pillar 2’s Impact on Tax Competition (with Michael P. Devereux (Oxford; Google Scholar) & Heydon Wardell-Burrus (Oxford)) as part of the UC-Irvine Tax Policy Colloquium. If you would like to attend, please contact Natascha Ryan Fastabend.

Tuesday, November 29: Eleanor Wilking (Cornell) will present Tax Incidence with Heterogeneous Firm Evasion: Evidence from Airbnb Remittance Agreements as part of the Boston College Tax Policy Workshop. If you would like to attend, please contact Jim Repetti.

Tuesday, November 29: Ariel Jurow Kleiman (Loyola-L.A.; Google Scholar) will these two papers as part of the NYU Tax Policy and Public Finance Colloquium:

• Impoverishment by Taxation, 170 U. Pa. L. Rev. ___ (2022)
• Asking Too Much: How American Governments Impoverish Their Own

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Is This The Beginning Of The End Of The U.S. News Rankings Dominance?

Chronicle of Higher Education, Is This the Beginning of the End of the 'U.S. News' Rankings Dominance:

Less than one week after the dean of Yale Law School announced she would no longer cooperate with U.S. News & World Report on its annual rankings, several of her peers have followed suit. As of Tuesday, deans at 10 of the 15 top-ranked law schools had said they would stop sending their data to U.S. News.

The collective revolt came quickly — and with barbs. In their announcements, the deans criticized the algorithm that U.S. News analysts use to produce the rankings. “The rankings rely on flawed survey techniques and opaque and arbitrary formulas, lacking the transparency needed to help applicants make truly informed decisions,” wrote Kerry Abrams, dean of Duke Law. The methodology creates “perverse incentives,” wrote Jenny Martinez, Stanford Law School’s dean. ...

If the law deans’ criticism sounds familiar, it’s because it echoes the complaints that have been leveled for decades against an even bigger project: the magazine’s ranking of undergraduate colleges and universities. There, too, critics have said the magazine’s metrics are flawed, opaque, and harm equity efforts.

But seldom have institutions acted on their concerns, as Yale and its peers have recently. And if elite colleges are willing to withdraw their support from one U.S. News ranking in the name of equity, why not another? In other words, is the undergraduate ranking the next venue for this kind of protest?

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The New And Decidedly Improved IRS 'Fact Sheet' Frequently Asked Questions

Frank G. Colella (Pace), The New and Decidedly Improved IRS 'Fact Sheet' Frequently Asked Questions, 100 Taxes — The Tax Magazine 49 (Apr. 2022):

On October 15, 2021, the IRS issued a News Release that updated its process for the issuance of frequently asked questions (FAQs) on “new tax legislation” and addressed concerns that taxpayers and practitioners had expressed about whether FAQs could be relied upon in the context of penalty relief requests. Had this News Release been issued as recently as two years ago, it may have raises some eyebrows because the number of IRS FAQs was relatively small and most practitioners were generally aware that they could not be cited as “authority” for a given tax position. But, in the post-Coronavirus world of tax practice and procedure, this News Release was a significant event given the sheer number of FAQs issued by the IRS in response to the tax legislation enacted as a result of the pandemic.

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NYU Seeks To Hire A Tax Law And Policy Fellow ($75,000-$88,000)

New York University School of Law is seeking a full-time Tax Law and Policy Fellow:

Description
The Tax Law Center at the New York University School of Law is seeking one full-time Tax Law and Policy Fellow to assist the Executive Director and other senior staff with research, writing, and project management. The fellow will work across subject matter areas in tax, which will include climate tax issues. The fellow will be able to work with senior staff to focus in on any area(s) of specialty in their second year if there is specific subject matter interest and as work needs allow.  

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Chicago And Cornell Are First Elite Law Schools To Refuse To Join U.S. News Rankings Boycott

Thomas J. Miles (Dean, Chicago), Rankings:

Many of you are aware that in the past week some law schools have announced that they will no longer participate in the U.S. News rankings. After conferring with University leaders and with some members of our faculty, our administrative team, and our alumni community, I have decided that we will continue to furnish information to U.S. News. 

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NY Times Op-Ed: Even Your Political Enemies Deserve A Slice Of Thanksgiving Pie

New York Times Op-Ed:  Even Your Political Enemies Deserve a Slice of Pie, by Tish Harrison Warren (Priest, Anglican Church; Author, Prayer in the Night: For Those Who Work or Watch or Weep (2021) (Christianity Today's 2022 Book of the Year)):

Just as some friends have inside jokes, my best friend, Woody, and I have an imaginary holiday. We call it Interdependence Day, an intentional play on Independence Day. The point is to recognize how we are all in this together. We mention it from time to time — things we hope to celebrate on Interdependence Day, people we want to honor on Interdependence Day, how we should get together for Interdependence Day. ...

I think that Thanksgiving, at its best, is something like Interdependence Day. The practice of gratitude asks us to acknowledge how our very existence depends on others. This yearly reminder of that reality is needed now more than ever.

Americans often cling to a myth of utter self-sufficiency. The hero is the self-made man. But if we are truly self-made, gratitude becomes impossible. In the 19th century, while visiting the United States, the French philosopher Alexis de Tocqueville observed a tendency for Americans to forget their larger community and past. In the now-classic “Democracy in America,” he wrote that the American citizen he saw was “thrown back forever upon himself alone” and confined “entirely within the solitude of his own heart.”

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UC-Irvine Is First Non-Elite Law School To Join U.S. News Rankings Boycott

Austen Parrish (Dean, UC-Irvine), University of California, Irvine School of Law Withdraws From Participating in U.S. News Annual Law School Rankings:

I write to share our decision to withdraw from participating in the U.S. News & World Report annual law school rankings — a decision that we have not reached lightly. Over the last several days, faculty have met to discuss as a group, and I have had conversations and meetings with staff, student leaders, alumni, and others. With thoughtful feedback and strong encouragement within our community, we will not be submitting proprietary data this year to U.S. News for use in its law school rankings.

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Pepperdine Caruso Law Is Thankful For Greg Ogden

After 44 years on the Pepperdine Caruso Law faculty, Greg Ogden taught his last class on Monday. We honored him with a clap-out:

On Monday evening, the faculty celebrated Greg with a dinner|roast at one of Pepperdine's beach houses:

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NY Times: Tax Prof Cruciverbalist

New York Times Crosswords, Collision Courses:

Samuel A. Donaldson is a law professor at Georgia State University, where he teaches courses on property, federal taxation and estate planning. He has been making crossword puzzles for The Times since 2008. His grids are typically filled with lively vocabulary, and this one is no different. “Solvers might not realize the theme until after they’re done,” Mr. Donaldson said of this puzzle, “so I wanted the process of getting to the finish line to be as enjoyable as possible.”

Law.com, GSU Law Prof Goes Across and Down to Create NY Times Crosswords:

Getting a crossword puzzle published in The New York Times is "one of the few meritocracies left," says Georgia State law professor Samuel Donaldson.

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A Wall Street Journal Thanksgiving

Wall Street Journal editorial, The Desolate Wilderness:

Here beginneth the chronicle of those memorable circumstances of the year 1620, as recorded by Nathaniel Morton, keeper of the records of Plymouth Colony, based on the account of William Bradford, sometime governor thereof:

So they left that goodly and pleasant city of Leyden, which had been their resting-place for above eleven years, but they knew that they were pilgrims and strangers here below, and looked not much on these things, but lifted up their eyes to Heaven, their dearest country, where God hath prepared for them a city (Heb. XI, 16), and therein quieted their spirits.

When they came to Delfs-Haven they found the ship and all things ready, and such of their friends as could not come with them followed after them, and sundry came from Amsterdam to see them shipt, and to take their leaves of them. One night was spent with little sleep with the most, but with friendly entertainment and Christian discourse, and other real expressions of true Christian love. ...

This editorial has appeared annually since 1961.

Wall Street Journal editorial, And the Fair Land:

Any one whose labors take him into the far reaches of the country, as ours lately have done, is bound to mark how the years have made the land grow fruitful.

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