The Consequences Of Limiting The Tax Deductibility Of R&D

Mary Cowx (Arizona State; Google Scholar), Rebecca Lester (Stanford; Google Scholar) & Michelle L. Nessa (Michigan State; Google Scholar), The Consequences of Limiting the Tax Deductibility of R&D: 

We study the tax payment and innovation consequences of limiting the tax deductibility of research and development ("R&D") expenditures. Beginning in 2022, U.S. companies are required to capitalize and amortize R&D rather than immediately deduct these expenditures. We utilize variation in U.S. firms' fiscal year ends to test the effects of the R&D tax change in a difference-indifferences framework. We first document that affected U.S. firms' cash effective tax rates increase by 11.9 percentage points (62%), on average. We then test and find decreases in R&D investment among domestic-only, research-intensive, and constrained firms. 

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Weekly SSRN Tax Article Review And Roundup: Saito Reviews Reconsidering Citizenship Taxation By Dagan & Mason

This week, Blaine Saito (Ohio State; Google Scholar) reviews Tsilly Dagan (Oxford; Google Scholar) & Ruth Mason (Virginia; Google Scholar), Reconsidering Citizenship Taxation, in Taxing People: The Next One Hundred Years (Tsilly Dagan & Ruth Mason, eds. Cambridge University Press 2025). 

There is truth to the hackneyed phrase that we live in a more globalized world. Tax discussions in recent years has focused on the mobility of capital, which in turn led toward efforts to protect the tax base from multinational entities’ profit shifting techniques. The common view was that people and labor were stickier. But the results of the pandemic along with various changes in laws that allowed digital nomads and golden pathways to citizenship for wealthy people has allowed a growing group of people to break loose from the traditional bonds of community of the nation-state. In their piece Reconsidering Citizenship Taxation, which will be a chapter in their upcoming anthology Taxing People: The Next One Hundred Years, Tsilly Dagan and Ruth Mason talk about recent rumblings to use citizenship as the basis for taxation. 

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Weekly Legal Education Roundup

• AALS, The American Law School Faculty Study
• Sabrina Balgamwalla (Wayne State) & Elizabeth Keyes (Baltimore), Clinics and Emergencies
• Chronicle of Higher Education Op-Ed (Peter Arcidiacono (Duke) & Tyler Ransom (Oklahoma)),  Are Elite Colleges (And Law Schools) Circumventing the Supreme Court?
• Elizabeth Cooper (Fordham) & Anita Weinberg (Loyola-Chicago), Finding Our Way: Teaching Legislative Advocacy Clinics
• Scott Fruehwald (Legal Skills Prof Blog), Bringing Legal Education Reform Into the First Year: A New Type of Torts Text
• Melina Healey (Touro), Opening Up the In-House: A Model for Collaborative Holistic Services and Education in Law School Clinical Programs
• The Hill Op-Ed (Steven Lubet (Northwestern)), Why California Should Not Be Admitting Teenagers to Law Practice

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Tax Policy In The Biden Administration

• Bloomberg, Fast-Moving GOP Agenda Could Punt Tax Law Fight to Later in 2025
• Bloomberg Editorial, Smarter Taxes and Higher Revenues Are Vital in 2025
• Inequality.org, Oops! A Rich-People-Friendly Think Tank Confirms Our Richest Pay Under 1 Percent of Their Wealth Annually in Tax
• Jacobin, The Rich Are Hoarding Their Wealth Using Charity Funds

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California Bar Will Consider Campus Protests In Moral Character Review For Lawyer Licensing

Reuters, Calif Bar Considers Campus Protests in Moral Character Review for Lawyer Licensing:

Bar admission authorities in California will consider applicants’ participation in campus protests on an “individual basis” during the moral character process, following an internal review.

A State Bar of California working group, which took up the issue of whether and how the bar should continue to weigh applicants' participation in campus protests when determining if they have the moral character to become licensed attorneys, said that evaluators must be careful to exclude protected political speech or expression, according to a memo, opens new tab slated to be discussed by the state bar’s Committee of Bar Examiners on Friday.

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Narotzki & Brauner: A Roadmap To NIL And Taxation

Doron Narotzki (Akron; Google Scholar) & Yariv Brauner (Florida; Google Scholar), A Roadmap to NIL and Taxation, 14 Am. U. Bus. L. Rev. 1 (2024):

The landscape of college sports has dramatically changed in recent years. What was once considered a place for amateur athletes pursuing education now partially mirrors, at least for some student-athletes, the structure and financial dynamics of professional leagues such as the NFL, NBA, and MLB. However, the collegiate sports ecosystem still remains distinct, shaped by unique regulatory frameworks governed by the NCAA. This article reviews and analyses the implications of these changes, and focuses on the tax considerations surrounding Name, Image, and Likeness (NIL) rights and how the evolving nature of college sports also presents certain tax implications, some of which are fairly technical, that can truly impact the economic outcomes for these student-athletes. 

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New University Of Chicago Law Course Digs Deeper Into Using Gen AI Responsibly

Legaltech News, New University of Chicago Law Course Digs Deeper Into Using Gen AI Responsibly:

This winter, the University of Chicago Law School will offer "Generative AI in Legal Practice," a course teaching law students how to harness generative artificial intelligence skills in an industry that is beginning to require them.

Ed Walters, chief strategy officer at legal research software company vLex, will be teaching the class after having co-taught the Georgetown Law Center course "Gen AI and Big Law" with professor Tanina Rostain, which exposed students to using gen AI to perform legal tasks and its implications.

Students taking the course will be using vLex’s Vincent AI legal research platform. In September, vLex announced upgrades to the platform, adding transactional and document drafting workflows.

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Blank & Glogower: The Rich, The IRS, And A New Approach To Tax Compliance

Joshua D. Blank (UC-Irvine; Google Scholar) & Ari Glogower (Northwestern; Google Scholar), Untaxed: The Rich, the IRS, and a New Approach to Tax Compliance (Cambridge University Press, 2024): 

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 (IRS). 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.

Reviews

“Blank and Glogower lay out a striking new approach to reining in rampant tax evasion by high-end taxpayers, including subjecting them to higher tax penalty rates, setting higher standards for claiming defenses against penalties, and requiring an annual wealth reporting form. Their carefully argued case commands close attention.”  Joel Slemrod, University of Michigan, and co-author of Taxing Ourselves: A Citizen’s Guide to the Debate over Taxes

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Georgetown Law Grad Can't Sue Foley & Lardner For Rescinding Job Offer Due To Her Anti-Israel Views

Following up on my previous posts:

• Foley & Lardner Rescinds Offer To Incoming Associate Due To Anti-Israel Comments (Dec. 4, 2023)
• Georgetown Law Grad Sues Foley & Lardner For Rescinding Job Offer Due To Her Pro-Palestine Views (May 31, 2024)

Law360, Foley & Lardner Gets Pro-Palestinian Atty's Suit Pared Down:

A former Foley & Lardner LLP summer associate who says the firm rescinded an employment offer over her public support for Palestinians saw part of her suit dismissed this week, with an Illinois federal judge finding that the firm never promised to hire her regardless of what kinds of activism she took part in.

Jinan Chehade had alleged that Alexis Robertson, the firm's director of diversity and inclusion, met with her before she was offered a full-time job and told her that Foley & Lardner valued her Arab Muslim heritage, according to U.S. District Judge Sharon Johnson Coleman's Tuesday decision.

Chehade said that conversation was a key part of her decision to accept a job offer for the fall of 2023 at the firm, but she says Foley & Lardner reneged on the offer.

Judge Coleman ruled that Chehade's allegations do not amount to a claim for promissory estoppel because she did not allege that Foley & Lardner promised to support her in any action she might take, especially if her actions went against the firm's values.

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The Unintended Consequences Of Global Tax Asymmetries On Foreign Risk-Taking

Nathan Born (U.S. Treasury, Penn; Google Scholar), The Unintended Consequences of Global Tax Asymmetries on Foreign Risk-Taking: 

Global tax asymmetries alter foreign investment incentives. The new US international tax regime, global intangible low-taxed income (GILTI), introduces a complex tax asymmetry based on taxable income and foreign capital structure factors, leading to incremental taxes on volatile foreign cash flows. I find empirical evidence consistent with US multinational enterprises responding to this asymmetry by decreasing foreign operational risks through consolidation of foreign operations, particularly those located in developing countries, into foreign headquarters. 

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'It's Like They Lynched You:' Law Professor's Discrimination Claim Reaches High Court

Texas Lawyer, 'It's Like They Lynched You:' Law Professor's Discrimination Claim Reaches High Court:

A former Southern Methodist University Dedman School of Law professor alleging coworkers ruined her reputation in a defamation campaign appeared to find friendly ears at the Texas Supreme Court.

During oral argument, the justices repeatedly expressed skepticism over SMU's argument that the use of the Texas Commission on Human Rights Act, or TCHRA, to bring discrimination and retaliation claims could preempt an alternate common law claim for defamation.

The issue came before the court as a certified question from the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit. In it, the plaintiff, Professor Cheryl Butler [Google Scholar], is appealing a district court decision that granted SMU's and individual defendant's motion to dismiss her common law torts.

The Fifth Circuit asked whether the Texas Commission on Human Rights Act preempts common law defamation claims against another employee to the extent the claims are based on the same course of conduct as discrimination or retaliation claims asserted against the employer.

According to Butler's brief, prepared and argued by Ithaca, New York attorney Ezra Ishmael Young, Butler, who is black, experienced a slew of tortious abuses and violations of Texas and federal workplace equal opportunity laws while on a tenure tract as law professor.

Young notes that SMU Law, founded in 1925, did not tenure its first black woman until 2015, emphasizing, "that 90-year streak was no accident."

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The Quiet Evolution In International Tax: Domestic Law And Double Taxation

Craig Elliffe (University of Auckland; Google Scholar), The Quiet Evolution in International Tax: Domestic Law and Double Taxation, 16 World Tax J. __ (2024):

This article is reproduced with the kind permission of IBFD. This article describes the respective roles of international tax law (predominantly tax treaties) and domestic tax law and their relationship with each other. This is a complex and interdependent relationship, with treaties, as special law, generally overriding domestic law. The article discusses the founding principle of tax treaties preventing double taxation, reflecting the original purpose of tax treaties. Subsequent developments over time have vigorously established the second principle of treaties: that the purpose of tax conventions is also to prevent tax avoidance and evasion. Such an increasingly important principle heralds the rise of anti-avoidance rules, prevention of abuse and the preservation of domestic taxing rights. The thesis in this article is that domestic law has prevailed against the more specialized law of treaties and at an increasing rate. This evolution has occurred in situations where the special law of treaties is "watered down" by the principle that treaties should not be allowed to be abused or in situations where they facilitate tax avoidance. 

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NY Times: University Of Michigan Weighs Changes To Its Diversity Program

Following up on my previous post: New York Times, The University Of Michigan Doubled Down on DEI. What Went Wrong? (Oct. 17, 2024):  New York Times, University of Michigan Weighs Changes to Its Diversity Program:

The University of Michigan, one of higher education’s staunchest proponents of diversity, equity and inclusion plans, is weighing changes to its own program as colleges across the country brace for the second presidency of Donald J. Trump and a Republican assault on such initiatives in government and academia.

Regents overseeing the university said in interviews that they expected the board to seek limits on so-called diversity statements in hiring and promotion decisions. The board may also look to shift more of Michigan’s overall D.E.I. budget into recruitment programs and tuition guarantees for lower-income students.

The changes under consideration would make Michigan one of the first selective public universities to rethink D.E.I. from the inside, rather than under legislative pressure. Democrats have a 6-2 majority on the board, which is elected by state voters and generally operates by consensus. Michigan’s state constitution provides regents ultimate control over the university’s finances as well as general oversight of the school.

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Tritt: The Curious Case Of The James Brown Estate

Lee-ford Tritt (Florida), The Curious Case of the James Brown Estate, 92 Geo. Wash. L. Rev. 753 (2024): 

Great musicians are larger than life, and the most iconic of them become members of an elite musical monarchy: Michael Jackson was the King of Pop, Aretha Franklin was the Queen of Soul, and Prince Rogers Nelson was Prince. Similarly, James Brown, the inventor of funk music, landed a seat at this table of legendary musicians. Although lacking a royal honorific, James Brown was “the Godfather of Soul.” The Godfather of Soul, though, shared more than musical prowess with these other iconic musicians. The estates of James Brown, Michael Jackson, Aretha Franklin, and Prince all continue to face legal obstacles— years after their deaths—many of which revolve around the artists’ copyright interests.

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Finding Our Way: Teaching Legislative Advocacy Clinics

Elizabeth B. Cooper (Fordham) & Anita Weinberg (Loyola-Chicago), Finding Our Way: Teaching Legislative Advocacy Clinics, 31 Clinical L. Rev. 41 (2024):

Legislative advocacy clinics are excellent vehicles for teaching lawyering skills, for achieving broad-based social change, and for imparting to law students the important roles they can play in preserving and strengthening our democracy. Notwithstanding their growth over the last 15 years, there has been little scholarly reflection about the pedagogy of teaching such clinics. This Article helps to fill this gap.

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The Spiderweb Of Partnership Tax Structures

Ryan Hess (Georgia), Emily Black (NYU), Zaynah Javed (Stanford; Google Scholar), Jonathan Hennessy (Stanford; Google Scholar), Rebecca Lester (Stanford; Google Scholar), Jacob Goldin (Chicago; Google Scholar), Daniel E. Ho (Stanford; Google Scholar) & Annette Portz (IRS), The Spiderweb of Partnership Tax Structures: 

U.S. partnerships control more than $40 trillion in assets, vastly outnumber U.S. public firms, and contribute significantly to the U.S. tax non-compliance of pass-through entities, which is larger than the non-compliance of publicly traded corporations. However, the prior literature provides extremely little evidence explaining the pervasive use of such entities and which specific characteristics enable the lightly taxed nature of partnership business income. Using administrative U.S. tax data, we first create graphical organizational structures by tracing income through millions of partnership entities. We show that 80 percent of partnership groups are simple structures composed of one single partnership owned directly by individual taxpayers. 

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Are Elite Colleges (And Law Schools) Circumventing The Supreme Court's SFFA Decision?

Chronicle of Higher Education Op-Ed:  Are Elite Colleges Circumventing the Supreme Court?, by Peter Arcidiacono (Duke; Google Scholar) & Tyler Ransom (Oklahoma; Google Scholar):

In the era of race-neutral admissions, data from entering classes don’t add up.

On July 2023, the Supreme Court issued landmark decisions in SFFA v. Harvard and SFFA v. UNC, ruling that using race as a factor in college admissions is unconstitutional. For many years, elite universities had been given the benefit of the doubt regarding the fairness and legality of their admissions decisions. But for understandable reasons, trust in higher education has been declining over the past decade — especially among Republicans. Now, as universities report their first post-SFFA admissions results, they’re again asking for trust — even as the data suggests some may not deserve it.

What raises questions is the wide variation in how the ruling has affected universities, even within the same tier of selectivity. While some elite universities saw large drops in their Black and Hispanic enrollment — exactly what many predicted would happen — others saw no change, or even increases, in those populations. Further clouding the issue, universities have reported their demographic data in inconsistent ways, and some haven’t reported numbers at all. This pattern of varied results and opaque reporting raises the question: Are some elite universities finding ways to circumvent the Supreme Court’s ruling? Some observers have argued that they clearly are, while others suggest they are not. Still others caution that it is too early to tell.

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Call For Papers: Cambridge Conference On Legal Perspectives On The Development And Enactment Of Tax Policy

Call for Papers: 

The Centre for Tax Law at the University of Cambridge is delighted to invite proposals for papers to be presented at our Tax Policy Conference on Monday 7 and Tuesday 8 July 2025.

The topic of the conference is 'Legal perspectives on the development and enactment of tax policy'. We have prepared a brief paper explaining this theme and setting out possible areas in which proposals could be made.

The CTL is a small centre with a particular focus on legal, philosophical and historical aspects of taxation. We welcome abstracts from all relevant academic fields but have a particular preference for papers from early career researchers, interested practitioners, legal scholars and researchers in other fields who are willing to comment on law from their own perspective.

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Collaborative Holistic Services And Education In Law School Clinical Programs

Melina A. Healey (Touro), Opening Up the In-House: A Model for Collaborative Holistic Services and Education in Law School Clinical Programs, 75 Wash. U. J.L. & Pol’y 152 (2024): 

Individual in-house clinics too commonly operate autonomously behind separate walls. These barriers impair the meaningful holistic representation of clients and the educational opportunities of clinic students. This article provides an argument and framework for opening the doors between clinics to enrich clinic student education and enhance client representation. Part I identifies the benefits of holistic inter-clinic collaboration for both clinic students and the clients they serve. Part II shares a model for how to integrate education and client service across practice areas of clinical programs. A forthcoming article, published separately, will further describe how clinical programs can be improved by removing silos in evaluation and creating unified programmatic-level clinical student and course assessment tools, which can in turn also illustrate the essential value of clinic to legal education.

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Elkins: Gregory v. Helvering—A Red Herring That Shaped Tax Jurisprudence

David Elkins (Netanya; Google Scholar), Gregory v. Helvering: A Red Herring that Shaped Tax Jurisprudence, 21 Berkeley Bus. L.J. 171 (2024) (reviewed by Michelle Layser (San Diego; Google Scholar) here): 

The Supreme Court’s decision in Gregory (affirming Learned Hand’s opinion in the Second Circuit) is one of the most influential decisions in the field of taxation. It is the source of a number of significant doctrines, including business purpose, economic substance, substance over form, and sham transactions. Although the literature and the case law continue to disagree about the exact ratio decidendi of Gregory, there is one foundational fact that is undisputed. From those directly involved in the proceedings (including the taxpayer’s own counsel) to the generations of commentators and judges over the generations, everyone who has looked at the case agrees that Mrs. Gregory exploited the reorganization provisions of the relevant Revenue Act for the purpose of reducing her tax liability. It is her use, misuse, or abuse — depending upon one’s perspective — of those provisions that has been the focal point of debate for almost a century. Today, there is a near unanimous consensus that her exploitation of the reorganization provisions was abusive and that the courts correctly denied her the benefits she sought.

This Article argues that that the decision in Gregory, along with most of the subsequent discourse, derives from a basic misunderstanding of Mrs. Gregory’s tax planning maneuver.

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Clinics And Emergencies

Sabrina Balgamwalla (Wayne State) & Elizabeth Keyes (Baltimore; Google Scholar), Clinics and Emergencies, 31 Clinical L. Rev. 1 (2024):

Clinical programs—and the clinicians who run them—are regularly called upon to respond to emergency situations. These engagements can be rewarding, personally and professionally. But, as we know from our own work as immigration clinicians, emergency lawyering also presents pressure points for clinicians. Our hope in writing this article is to surface and critique the dynamics that arise when clinicians are called upon to engage in emergency work. Specifically, we aim to expand on the literature of clinics and emergency responses by reflecting on the ways in which emergency responses have drawn significant energy and time from clinicians, including ourselves. 

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Educational Choice & The Problem Of Unprincipled Judging: An Object Lesson From Kentucky

Benjamin Field (Institute for Justice) & Joshua A. House (George Washington), Educational Choice & The Problem of Unprincipled Judging: An Object Lesson from Kentucky, 51 N. Ky. L. Rev. 23 (2024):

Programs giving families educational choices and resources beyond the traditional public-school system are now mainstream and present in most States. Like any government program, they are subject to judicial review, and most survive such scrutiny after a fair hearing. Yet sometimes, the political controversies around these programs lead courts to abandon their principles in favor of sui generis rulings. Such rulings cherry-pick snippets of constitutional text and case law, while ignoring the whole text, constitutional history, the thrust of precedent, and even the practical implications for other government programs. In other words, these courts abandon the very guideposts on which they profess to ground their constitutional rulings. The Kentucky Supreme Court’s 2022 landmark decision in Commonwealth v. Johnson, and the litigation leading up to it, perfectly illustrates this unfortunate phenomenon.

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Former Law Prof Drops Lawsuit Against George Mason Over Title IX Probe

Law360, Ex-GMU Law Prof Drops Suit Over Title IX Probe:

A former law professor on Wednesday dropped his suit against George Mason University over its Title IX investigation into allegations that he retaliated against students who filed sexual misconduct claims against him.

The stipulation, signed by lawyers for both former professor Joshua Wright and GMU, did not provide a reason for the decision but said each party would cover its own costs. The parties were not immediately available for comment.

The Virginia federal court filing comes just over a week after GMU asked the court to toss what remained of the lawsuit because the school had already dismissed the claim by the time he filed his amended complaint.

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Real Property, Trust & Estate Law Journal Publishes New Issue

The Real Property, Trust and Estate Law Journal has published Vol. 59, Iss. 1 (Spring 2024):

• Harvey Philip Dale (NYU), Standards for Exemption: Inurement, Private Benefit, and Excess Benefit Transactions, 59 Real Prop. Tr. & Est. L.J. 1 (2024)
• Lisa Goodrich Page (Dungey Dougherty), Donor Advised Funds and Disqualified Persons: Understanding the Logic of Code Section 4958(c)(2), 59 Real Prop. Tr. & Est. L.J. 45 (2024)

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Why California Should Not Be Admitting Teenagers To Practice Law

Following up on my previous post, 17-Year Old Is Youngest Ever To Pass California Bar Exam, Begins Work As Deputy DA:  The Hill Op-Ed:  Why California Should Not Be Admitting Teenagers to Law Practice, by Steven Lubet (Northwestern):

Oliver Wendell Holmes, the great Supreme Court justice and legal scholar, sagely observed that “the life of the law has not been logic; it has been experience.” Unfortunately, the California Committee of Bar Examiners does not seem to have gotten the message.

Twice in the past two years, the bar examiners announced that 17-year-old applicants had passed the bar examination, to be sworn in as lawyers upon reaching 18. It is an accomplishment to pass the notoriously difficult California bar exam “at any age,” said Leah Wilson, executive director of the state bar, “and to do so at 17 is truly exceptional.”

The two youngsters absolutely deserve congratulations on their achievements, which were reported in the national press, but this is not something to be celebrated.

I don’t doubt the brainpower and studiousness of the teenagers, a brother and sister, born a year apart, who began their law studies while still in middle school. Nonetheless, it is simply impossible for even the most book-smart 18-year-old to have acquired the life experience necessary for the competent practice of law.

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Tax Panel At The United Nations On Global Tax Reform To Produce Financing For Development

Steven Dean (Boston University; Google Scholar) moderates a panel on Global Tax Reform to Produce Financing for Development at the United Nations today as part of its Financing for Development Dialogues: From Evidence to Action:

The OECD promoted its 2021 global tax reform proposal with a brochure that featured a sun-drenched island overflowing with coconut trees, cash and gold. Although that publication falsely indicated that small island developing states should be blamed for the failure of the global tax system, that illustration hints at a different possibility. Global tax reform designed to serve rather than demonize developing states could unlock the revenues small island developing states and others need for climate resilience, health, and education.

In the 1950s, the United Nations served as the forum for ambitious efforts to tax multinational to deliver the resources developing states needed. The rise of the OECD in the 1960s served as a rebuke to those efforts, curbing the power of poor states to tax multinationals. Despite innovations such as the controlled foreign corporation rules—essentially early versions of today’s global minimum taxes—designed to promote the taxation of multinationals by wealthy states over time multinationals exploited the OECD's rules to avoid taxation everywhere.

Recent efforts to shift the center of global tax policymaking back to the United Nations could reverse that decades-long trend. Innovations such as the digital services taxes the United States and the OECD have fought hard against highlight the relatively simple ways in which UN-led reform could generate meaningful resources for developing countries.

Panelists: 

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Legal Ed News Roundup

• ABA Journal, Slight Rankings Drop At University Of Florida And Its Law School May Have Been Factor In President's Exit
• Bar and Bench (India), Law Students Under-Equipped to Assist Clients Seeking Legal Aid: Supreme Court Report
• Neil Buchanan (Florida), The Race for Rankings and the Vindication of Former Dean Rosenbury
• Center for Research and Planning (India Supreme Court), Legal Aid Through Law Schools: A Report on Working of Legal Aid Cells in India
• Cleveland.com, The Factors That Brought This LA Boy From Atlanta to Akron for Law School Might Not Happen Today. That’s Sad.
• Inside Higher Ed, Penn State Built a Second Law School. Now, It’s Going Back to One.
• Legal Intelligencer, Walter Taggart, Villanova Law Professor, Dies at 81

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Envisioning § 501(C)(3) Social Impact Cooperatives As A Strategy To Address Poverty

Jerome Hughes (District of Columbia), Envisioning §501(c)(3) Social Impact Cooperatives as a Strategy to Address Poverty, 53 Cumb. L. Rev. 398 (2023):

Section 501(c)(3) of the Internal Revenue Code (“I.R.C.”) provides federal tax exemption to nonprofit organizations that are organized and operated exclusively for exempt and charitable purposes, including the relief of the poor. Cooperative enterprises address poverty by generating a range of social and economic benefits, for example, by deepening democratic participation, enhancing human and intellectual capital, creating employment, and generating positive externalities to the community and public. Notwithstanding these benefits, cooperatives serving low-income populations are not currently recognized as tax-exempt charitable organizations and have unique challenges in financing and entity formation. In order to expand the entity forms available for reducing poverty and address formation and financing challenges, this Article proposes an I.R.C. § 501(c)(3) inclusion for social impact cooperatives—cooperatives that (i) contain no fewer than seventy-five percent of members who qualify as poor and economically disadvantaged, (ii) restrict fifty percent of their net earnings and 100% of their donations to a nonprofit internal account, and (iii) are certified annually by a social impact monitoring nonprofit. 

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WaPo: Notre Dame Is A Pipeline For Supreme Court Clerks, Magnet For Justices

Following up on my previous post, NBC News: Notre Dame Law School’s Growing Influence On The Supreme Court:  Washington Post, Notre Dame is a Pipeline for Supreme Court Clerks, Magnet for Justices:

Growing ties between Notre Dame law school and the Supreme Court show the appeal of getting out of D.C. and of an environment that welcomes conservative views. ...

The court’s conservative justices are increasingly hiring the law school’s graduates and faculty to work in their chambers. Two recent graduates are among the four clerks working this term with Justice Amy Coney Barrett, a Notre Dame graduate and longtime law professor. A third graduate is slated to clerk for Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. next year.

In addition, two of the school’s professors — legal historian Christian Burset and Patrick Reidy, who is also a Catholic priest — are clerking for Justices Neil M. Gorsuch and Brett M. Kavanaugh this term.

The justices, meanwhile, are flocking to Notre Dame to teach, lecture and enjoy the elaborate Fighting Irish football festivities. Their growing ties in part reflect shared legal views between the conservative justices and the Catholic law school, whose religious liberty clinic — started by Dean Marcus Cole to defend religious freedoms — often files briefs in cases before the court.

But the nexus between South Bend and the Supreme Court also represents frustration among conservatives with liberal elite law schools that have been criticized as inhospitable to their views. Those who interact with the justices say they are drawn to the Midwestern campus because of its breadth of conservative legal scholarship, in addition to the appeal of football and an all-day tailgate.

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Lesson From The Tax Court: The Limits Of IRS Assessment Powers

Many people imagine the IRS as a kind of huge and powerful being, “whose frown, and wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command” regularly oversees enforcement of what many believe are outrageous penalties for errors in complying with increasingly twisted reporting requirements.

Today we learn a lesson about possible limits of the IRS powers to assess some of these reporting penalties, specifically the ones found in §6038 (titled “Information reporting with respect to certain foreign corporations and partnerships”).

In Raju J. Mukhi v. Commissioner, 163 T.C. No. 8 (Nov. 18, 2024) (Judge Greaves), the Tax Court reaffirmed its conclusion that the IRS has no authority to assess §6038 penalties.  Instead, the only way for the government to impose those penalties is by filing suit in court.  We learn that, at least in the Tax Court’s view, neither §6038 itself nor any other part of the Internal Revenue Code give the IRS authority to assess §6038 penalties.

Today’s case also teaches a lesson about the Tax Court’s relationship with other federal courts.  Often labeled “the Golsen rule” that relationship is not a simple one.  See e.g. Lesson From The Tax Court: The Rules For Penalty Approval Depend On Geography, TaxProf Blog (Oct. 20, 2023).  The Tax Court’s decision in this case directly conflicts with the D.C. Circuit’s interpretation of §6038.  See Farhy v. Commissioner, 100 F.4th 223 (2024) (overruling Tax Court’s interpretation of §6038).  Under the Golsen rule, however, the Tax Court is not bound by any Circuit Court of Appeals decision.  It is free to disagree with any other federal court ... except the U.S. Supreme Court!  So whether you are teaching students, advising clients, or litigating in Tax Court, you gotta pay close attention to what the Tax Court says.

Details below the fold.

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The American Law School Faculty Study

AALS, The American Law School Faculty Study:

As higher and legal education continue to evolve, gaining a comprehensive understanding of law school faculty is increasingly important. To this end, the American Law School Faculty Study provides a snapshot of law teaching and today and is the first of its kind to detail faculty career pathways and work experiences as well as recent hiring trends in legal education.

Primarily drawing on two surveys, one at the school-level and one at the individual-level, this study details analysis of responses from 117 current or acting deans and 1,892 faculty members across 194 AALS member and fee-paid law schools. It was designed to investigate several research questions:

1. Who are law school faculty today?
2. What are the main career pathways to teaching law?
3. What are the current hiring practices of law schools?
4. What are the expectations of law faculty for earning tenure?
5. What are the job responsibilities of law faculty and how much time do they allocate to each?
6. How satisfied are law school faculty with their jobs?

In presenting novel findings about the current legal education landscape, the report offers key insights on law school faculty demographic profiles, professional experiences, and institutional characteristics, such as selectivity and governance.

Hear about the top takeaways from AALS Associate Director of Research Katie Kempner, and listen to analysis of the findings from AALS President Melanie Wilson (Dean, Washington & Lee University School of Law), Brian Leiter (University of Chicago Law School), and Angela Onwuachi-Willig (Dean, Boston University School of Law).

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TaxProf Blog Thanksgiving Weekend Roundup

Thanksgiving:

• SSRN Tax Professor Rankings
• Terrence Malick’s Thanksgiving Masterpiece: The New World
• Defending U.S. Citizenship-Based Taxation In Theory And In Practice
• The Catholic Origins Of Thanksgiving
• WKRP In Cincinnati Thanksgiving Turkey Drop
• A Wall Street Journal Thanksgiving

Friday:

• Weekly Legal Education Roundup
• The Intersection Of Tax Law And Computational Law
• Tax Policy In The Biden Administration

Saturday:

• This Week's Ten Most Popular TaxProf Blog Posts
• Students Pull Wholesome Prank On Law Prof On Last Day Of Class
• Getting A Handle On The Taxation Of Sports Betting

Sunday:

• Two Perspectives On The Widening Of God's Mercy: Sexuality Within The Biblical Story
• WSJ Op-Ed: A Blessing For The Sole
• Comfort Or The Cross?
• The Rise Of The Critical–Contextual Legal Education Reform Movement
• The Top Five New Tax Papers

Two Perspectives On The Widening Of God's Mercy: Sexuality Within The Biblical Story

New York Times Op-Ed:  ‘A God Who Continually Surprises Us’: A Q&A With a Theologian Who Changed His Mind About Gay Marriage, by Peter Wehner (Senior Fellow, Trinity Forum):

I’ve spent my life in politics, but faith has been most central to shaping who I am. My conversations with people of faith have been among the most enriching of my life. Richard Hays, an ordained minister who is an emeritus professor at Duke Divinity School, is one of the world’s leading New Testament theologians. In 1996 he wrote The Moral Vision of the New Testament: Community, Cross, New Creation, A Contemporary Introduction to New Testament Ethics, in which he argued that gay and lesbian sexual relationships distort God’s created order and that churches should not bless same-sex unions. In his new book, The Widening of God's Mercy: Sexuality Within the Biblical Story, written with his son Christopher Hays, Richard Hays says he was wrong. I spoke to Richard Hays about his journey and what changed his mind. This conversation, which has been lightly edited, is the first of what I hope will be a series exploring the world of faith.

1. A Different Way of Looking at How God Sees Gay Relationships

Peter Wehner: You now hold an affirming view, the belief that gay relationships are not sinful and that sexual orientation and gender identity are not justification for exclusion from church membership or leadership. You had a very different view in 1996 when you wrote “The Moral Vision of the New Testament.” What do you see now that you didn’t see in 1996, and what would Richard Hays circa 2024 say to his younger self?

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WSJ Op-Ed: A Blessing For The Sole

Wall Street Journal Op-Ed: A Blessing for the Sole, by Mike Kerrigan (Hunton Andrews Kurth, Charlotte, NC):

An airport shoeshine man gave me a lesson about God and his human gifts on earth.

Shortly after passing through airport security, I realized my shoes were in desperate need of a shine. I stopped at Executive Shine in Charlotte, N.C., and took a seat in the regal bank of elevated chairs. ... When it was time to settle up, I asked what I owed for his services. “Whatever you think it was worth,” he said. ...

A cynic, Oscar Wilde said, is a man who knows the price of everything and the value of nothing. This most uncynical man demands no price for payment, only value for consideration. I think I understand why. Transactions in the material economy may be zero-sum—a dollar in his pocket was one out of mine—but ones in the spiritual economy never are. The abundant trust he placed in me didn’t diminish his stores of unperishable virtue. ...

A lot to draw from a chance encounter with an ordinary person? I think not, for two reasons, both courtesy of C.S. Lewis.

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Comfort Or The Cross?

Dispatch Faith:  Comfort or the Cross?, by Kevin D. Williamson:

Alpharetta, Georgia—No cross, plenty of parking. Welcome to North Point Community Church. ... North Point is pretty much the model suburban evangelical megachurch. It doesn’t have worship, it has a “live experience.” It doesn’t have childcare, either, but a series of “environments” for the kids: something called Waumba Land for the little ones, Upstreet for the elementary-school kids, Transit for the middle schoolers, InsideOut for the high schoolers. There are bright colors and flashing lights and video screens and all that crap, but the real stuff is in there, too: There’s a lesson on what it means to be “slow to anger” underway. One must not make too much of the packaging. 

Still, one notices certain absences—the name “Jesus,” for instance, or anything that would identify the building as one intended for religious purposes. 

It is a very easy place—and phenomenon—to mock. ... But, at the same time, this is—snooty aesthetic considerations notwithstanding—a slice of the better sort of American life, inasmuch as the people who actually get up on Sunday mornings and go to church with their families are, on the whole, a much more squared-away group of people than the ones who are still sleeping off a hangover at 11 a.m. and better-adjusted than a lot of the expensively miseducated types putting their breakfast on Instagram around the same time of day. ...

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The Rise Of The Critical–Contextual Legal Education Reform Movement

Cara R. Shaffer (Colorado), Context at the Periphery: The Rise of the Critical–Contextual Legal Education Reform Movement, 30 Cardozo J. Equal Rts. & Soc. Just. 55 (2023):

Despite challenges faced by Generation Z (“Gen Z”), research shows that they are resilient and deeply committed to impacting positive political and social change. This is no surprise. Gen Z students have been bombarded with an embroiled within polarized political messaging for years. This messaging is often partisan, balkanized, and delivered right to their iPhones. Indeed, forty-four percent of Gen Z reads no traditional new sources and receives all of their news from TikTok, Twitter, Instagram, and similar sources. Further, the United States education system fails its students, both compared to other countries and to the country’s own historical standards. Scores in history, civics, and critical reading have decreased in recent years. Educators agree this may be, in part, because these contextual subjects are marginalized within the system. Moreover, we now have students entering law school who are the victims of reinvigorated regressive political moves to censure history, literature, and social context. Culturally, de-emphasis on humanities-based ideas and frameworks may be having an effect. Interestingly, recent polling by Nord Anglia revealed that only thirty-eight percent of Gen Z respondents believed critical thinking was one of the top skills for a successful career. Now, in the law school classroom, educators remark that this group of students face serious issues with critical thinking and contextualizing information.

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The Top Five New Tax Papers

There is a quite 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 #3.

1. [272 Downloads]  False Idols In The Early History Of International Taxation, by Wei Cui (British Columbia; Google Scholar)
2. [265 Downloads]  ETFs and the Wash Sale Loophole, by Michael Dambra (SUNY- Buffalo), Andrew Glover (University of Washington), Charles M.C. Lee (Stanford) & Phillip Quinn (University of Washington)
3. [243 Downloads]  Rotten to the Core: The EU's Court of Justice Decision in Apple, by Ruth Mason (Virginia; Google Scholar) & Stephen Daly (King's College London; Google Scholar)
4. [171 Downloads]  The U.N. Framework Tax Convention: Can It Bridge the North-South Divide?, by Assaf Harpaz (Georgia; Google Scholar)
5. [140 Downloads]  Winning by Losing: The Strategy of Adverse Letter Rulings, by Noah Hertz Marks (Duke) (reviewed by Blaine Saito (Ohio State; Google Scholar) here)

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

This Week's Ten Most Popular TaxProf Blog Posts

Legal Education: 

1. Above the Law, BigLaw Associate Compensation Soars To $251k For 1st Years, $575k For 8th Years
2. Steven Foster (Oklahoma City) & Nachman Gutowski (UNLV), Breaking The Cycle: Rethinking Bar Exam Scoring And Portability For NextGen Examinees
3. Washington Post, After Outcry, Georgetown Law School Says Student Due To Give Birth Soon Can Defer Final Exam
4. Inside Higher Ed, Hundreds Of Female Colorado Professors Awarded Back Pay In Gender Pay Gap Suit
5. Sean Harrington (Oklahoma), QuizBot: An Innovative AI-Assisted Assessment In Legal Education
6. Daniel Rodriguez (Northwestern), Law School Admissions Agonistes
7. Press Release, Arizona Law School Sells JD-Next Law School Preparation Program To Aspen
8. Carlo Pedrioli (Southern), The Law Professor's Role In Legal Education: Theory v. Practice
9. Bloomberg Law, Retired Justice Breyer Discloses $246,526 Salary For Harvard Law School Teaching
10. Brian Flaherty (Boston University), Teaching Fails: Celebration and Adaptation

Tax:

1. Ruth Mason (Virginia) & Stephen Daly (King's College London), Rotten To The Core: The EU's Court Of Justice Decision In Apple
2. Tsilly Dagan (Oxford) & Ruth Mason (Virginia), Reconsidering Citizenship Taxation
3. SSRN, Tax Professor Rankings
4. Ari Glogower (Northwestern), Presentation of Apportioned Direct Taxes At UC-Irvine
5. Daniel Schaffa (Richmond), Reimagining The Deduction For Employee Compensation
6. Michael Love (Columbia), Who Benefits From Partnership Flexibility?
7. Rebecca Morrow (Wake Forest), Presentation Of The Income Tax As A Market Correction At Boston College
8. Jay Soled (Rutgers) & Kathleen DeLaney Thomas (North Carolina), Predictive Analytics And The Tax Code
9. James Alm (Tulane), Jay Soled (Rutgers) & Kathleen DeLaney Thomas (North Carolina), Multibillion-Dollar Tax Questions
10. Tax Section of the California Lawyers Association, Ellen Aprill Receives Joanne Garvey Award For Lifetime Achievement In Tax

Faith

1. Russell Moore (Editor-in-Chief, Christianity Today), How Trump And Harris Voters Can Get Through The Next Four Years
2. Inside Higher Ed, Religious Colleges (And Law Schools) That Lean Into Their Faith Are Thriving
3. New York Times Op-Ed (David French), I Believe in Miracles. Just Not All of Them.
4. The Catholic World Report, The Catholic Origins Of Thanksgiving
5. Dispatch Faith (Hannah Anderson), Remembering Humility As A Virtue In Our Divided Age

Students Pull Wholesome Prank On Law Prof On Last Day Of Class

InspireMore, Students Pull Wholesome Prank On Law School Professor On Last Day Of Class:

[A] class full of students at Belmont University are proving that [a wholesome prank] is possible — and more than worth it! As the semester was coming to a close, one student in particular had a brilliant idea.

This class was taught by a law professor named David Hudson. According to the feedback this prank has gotten, it’s clear that he is greatly loved. But there’s something else about him that may not be as well known: He has a reoccurring alarm set on his phone for 9 a.m. — this is so he’ll wake up in time for class. That said, he doesn’t actually need it every day, so sometimes, the alarm goes off during class. His students have learned this by now, and it gave them an idea. …

[W]hen 9 a.m. hits and David’s phone goes off, it takes him just a moment to recognize something is different today. In addition to his usual alarm, every single one of his students have a phone that’s making noise, too! The only thing more wholesome than the prank itself is David’s heartwarming reaction.

@josiedrumwright6

Law school is fun😄

♬ original sound - Josie Drumwright :)

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Getting A Handle On The Taxation Of Sports Betting

Samuel C. Craig (Tax LL.M. 2025, Florida), Getting a Handle on the Taxation of Sports Betting, 44 Loyola L.A. Ent. Rev. 1 (2023):

Sports betting is not merely a 21st century novelty; however, recent legislative and societal changes have allowed sports betting to bloom into a widespread phenomenon in America. The rapid emergence of sports betting in American life has caused states to react with legislation ranging from fullstop bans to partnerships with sportsbooks to capitalize on this lucrative and newly legal activity. While plenty of discussion can be found regarding the social and political considerations of legalizing gambling and related activities, no comprehensive legal scholarship has focused specifically on the taxation of sports betting. Sports betting exists in a relatively unique position as an activity that is now federally legal but not uniformly legal nationwide due to differences in state law. It comes as no surprise that as a result, a variety of different approaches to taxing sports betting has emerged, and it is worth considering the current legal and mechanical challenges in raising revenue from America’s favorite new vice.

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Weekly Legal Education Roundup

• Above the Law, BigLaw Associate Compensation Soars To $251k For 1st Years, $575k For 8th Years
• Bloomberg Law, Retired Justice Breyer Discloses $246,526 Salary For Harvard Law School Teaching
• Marni Goldstein Caputo & Kathleen Luz (Boston University), Beyond "Hard" Skills: Teaching Outward-and Inward-Facing Character-Based Skills to 1Ls in Light of ABA Standard 303 (B)(3)'s Professional Identity
• Paul Caron (Dean, Pepperdine), BigLaw Associate Compensation Soars To $251k For 1st Years, $575k For 8th Years  
• Brian Flaherty (Boston University), Teaching Fails: Celebration and Adaptation
• Sean Harrington (Oklahoma), QuizBot: An Innovative AI-Assisted Assessment In Legal Education

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Lawsky: The Intersection Of Tax Law And Computational Law

John Nay (Stanford; Google Scholar) & Sarah Lawsky (Northwestern; Google Scholar) et. al, Large Language Models as Tax Attorneys: A Case Study in Legal Capabilities Emergence, 382 Phil. Transactions of the Royal Society A (2024):

Better understanding of Large Language Models’(LLMs) legal analysis abilities can contribute to improving the efficiency of legal services, governing artificial intelligence and leveraging LLMs to identify inconsistencies in law. This paper explores LLM capabilities in applying tax law. We choose this area of law because it has a structure that allows us to set up automated validation pipelines across thousands of examples, requires logical reasoning and math skills, and enables us to test LLM capabilities in a manner relevant to real-world economic lives of citizens and companies. Our experiments demonstrate emerging legal understanding capabilities, with improved performance in each subsequent OpenAI model release. We experiment with retrieving and using the relevant legal authority to assess the impact of providing additional legal context to LLMs. Few-shot prompting, presenting examples of question–answer pairs, is also found to significantly enhance the performance of the most advanced model, GPT-4. The findings indicate that LLMs, particularly when combined with prompting enhancements and the correct legal texts, can perform at high levels of accuracy but not yet at expert tax lawyer levels. As LLMs continue to advance, their ability to reason about law autonomously could have significant implications for the legal profession and AI governance. This article is part of the theme issue ‘A complexity science approach to law and governance’.

Sarah Lawsky (Northwestern; Google Scholar), Computational Law and Epistemic Trespassing, 2 J. Cross-Disciplinary Research in Computational L. 1 (2024):

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Tax Policy In The Biden Administration

• Bloomberg, Colleges’ Bond Tax Break at Risk From GOP Goal to Punish Schools
• Bloomberg, GOP Plans Roadmap for Renewing 2017 Tax Law in First 100 Days
• Bloomberg, Trump Win Raises Pressure on Countries to Rethink Digital Taxes
• Bloomberg, Venmo, CashApp Will Send Tax Form to Many New Sellers in 2025
• New York Times, Newsom Challenges Trump on Electric Vehicle Tax Credits
• New York Times, Republicans Ponder: What if the Trump Tax Cuts Cost Nothing?

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Terrence Malick’s Thanksgiving Masterpiece: The New World

Titus Techera (Law & Liberty), Terrence Malick’s Thanksgiving Masterpiece:

Thanksgiving could be understood in one of two ways. In the ordinary sense, we give thanks for good things received. Generosity and gratitude are somehow the foundational aspects of justice, each giving and getting what he deserves. As a virtue, thanksgiving is a moral affirmation of humanity in helping one another—but crucially not one we can establish as a law. This is part of Thanksgiving, but it’s not the core, because it is only a conclusion. Only after receiving a benefit do we become grateful.

The extraordinary sense of thanksgiving is emphatically religious because it is about hope, our thankfulness before we receive that for which we hope, what it is that we most strongly feel we need. It concerns divine providence, grace without which our families and communities would be uncertain of their future or their ground. Unsurprisingly, this is very difficult to talk about publicly, both because the subject is difficult and because in a secularizing society, we’re only dimly aware of the wellsprings of our way of life. It may be easier to turn to an artistic reconstruction of our history, our origins, because that places outside ourselves, in view of everyone, an interpretation of our secret beliefs.

The Problem of Freedom
Terrence Malick attempted such a tale of America as seen in its beginnings in The New World, which was intended for a Thanksgiving 2005 release, but, due to difficulties in editing, came out in December of that year. The movie’s remarkable beauty was immediately noticed and, accordingly, Emmanuel Lubezki’s cinematography was nominated for the Oscar.

The New World is the story of the princess Pocahontas as well as the English settling of North America at Jamestown, in Virginia. ...

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SSRN Tax Professor Rankings

SSRN has updated its monthly ranking of 750 American and international law school faculties and 3,000 law professors by (among other things) the number of paper downloads from the SSRN database.  Here is the new list (through November 1, 2024) of the Top 25 U.S. Tax Professors in two of the SSRN categories: all-time downloads and recent downloads (within the past 12 months):

		All-Time			Recent
1	Reuven Avi-Yonah (Michigan)	237,914	1	Jonathan Choi (USC)	18,613
2	Daniel Hemel (NYU)	136,596	2	Amy Monahan (Minnesota)	12,518
3	David Gamage (Missouri-Columbia)	130,466	3	Reuven Avi-Yonah (Michigan)	11,707
4	Dan Shaviro (NYU)	129,845	4	Zachary Liscow (Yale)	6,281
5	Lily Batchelder (NYU)	129,053	5	Kristin Hickman (Minnesota)	4,784
6	Darien Shanske (UC-Davis)	122,402	6	Daniel Hemel (NYU)	4,701
7	David Kamin (NYU)	115,788	7	Bridget Crawford (Pace)	4,287
8	Cliff Fleming (BYU)	109,532	8	Kim Clausing (UCLA)	3,895
9	Ari Glogower (Northwestern)	105,868	9	David Gamage (Missouri-Columbia)	3,607
10	Manoj Viswanathan (UC-SF)	105,503	10	D. Dharmapala (UC-Berkeley)	3,555
11	Rebecca Kysar (Fordham)	105,034	11	Darien Shanske (UC-Davis)	3,539
12	D. Dharmapala (UC-Berkeley)	55,455	12	Brad Borden (Brooklyn)	3,446
13	Michael Simkovic (USC)	51,163	13	Louis Kaplow (Harvard)	3,261
14	Louis Kaplow (Harvard)	45,083	14	Robert Sitkoff (Harvard)	3,123
15	Jonathan Choi (USC)	43,765	15	David Weisbach (Chicago)	2,704
16	Paul Caron (Pepperdine)	42,656	16	Ruth Mason (Virginia)	2,703
17	Bridget Crawford (Pace)	42,178	17	Kyle Rozema (Northwestern)	2,669
18	Richard Ainsworth (Boston Univ.)	40,782	18	Michael Simkovic (USC)	2,499
19	Robert Sitkoff (Harvard)	36,442	19	Brian Galle (Georgetown)	2,257
20	Amy Monahan (Minnesota)	35,532	20	Andy Grewal (Iowa)	2,066
21	Brad Borden (Brooklyn)	35,173	21	Jordan Barry (USC)	2,044
22	Ruth Mason (Virginia)	33,622	22	Richard Ainsworth (Boston Univ.)	1,942
23	Kim Clausing (UCLA)	31,871	23	Edward McCaffery (USC)	1,934
24	Vic Fleischer (UC-Irvine)	31,550	24	Ellen Aprill (Loyola-L.A.)	1,910
25	Ed Kleinbard (USC)	30,627	25	Young Ran (Christine) Kim (Cardozo)	1,894

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Zelinsky: Defending U.S. Citizenship-Based Taxation In Theory And In Practice

Edward A. Zelinsky (Cardozo), Defending U.S. Citizenship-Based Taxation in Theory and in Practice: An Essay on Fiscal Citizenship in a FATCA World, 46 Cardozo L. Rev. ___ (2025):

U.S. taxation of its citizens living abroad is better in practice and sounder in theory than the critics maintain. While the U.S. is the only nation which uses legal citizenship to tax the worldwide incomes of its citizens living abroad, other nations’ residence-based tax systems also often reach extraterritorially by taxing the worldwide incomes of overseas citizens as continuing residents of their home countries. U.S. citizenship-based taxation reaches similar results more efficiently by avoiding factually complex determinations of individuals’ domiciles or residences. When opponents of current law call for the U.S. to adopt residence-based taxation, they do not acknowledge the extent to which existing residence-based tax systems in practice also tax citizens living abroad extraterritorially on their worldwide incomes by deeming them to still reside in their respective home nation.

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The Catholic Origins Of Thanksgiving

The Catholic World Report, The Catholic Origins of Thanksgiving:

Did you know that Thanksgiving is a Catholic holiday? ...

What most people believe is a variation on what I was taught in public school in the 1960s. The Pilgrims came to Plymouth on a ship called the Mayflower. They were the first English settlers in America. They came for religious freedom. And they had a big feast with Indians, and that was the first Thanksgiving. That about sums it up. And that is what Chesterton calls “The Myth of the Mayflower.”

First of all, they were not known as “pilgrims” till about 200 years afterwards. They were Puritans, a radical Anglican “low church” sect that loathed the “high church” Anglicans that happened to include the King of England. In fact, about 30 years after the Puritans arrived in America, some of their fellow Puritans back in England arranged for King Charles I to have his head chopped off.

Secondly, there were at least nine other British settlements before the Plymouth colony. In fact, one of them was at Plymouth. All but one of them failed, including the first settlement at Plymouth. The Puritans who came to Plymouth in 1620 almost didn’t survive. Half the settlers died the first winter. They were saved by a Native American named Squanto, who taught them how to hunt and fish and grow corn.

But here’s what is really interesting:  Squanto was a Roman Catholic.

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WKRP In Cincinnati Thanksgiving Turkey Drop

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