This Week's Ten Most Popular TaxProf Blog Posts

1. The Hillary Speech Issue No One Is Talking About: Assignment Of Income
2. Former UC-Berkeley Law School Dean Files Grievance Over Attempt To Revoke His Tenure In Wake Of Sexual Harassment Complaint
3. Today Is Tax Freedom Day — Earlier In MS, TN & LA, Later In CT, NJ & NY
4. The Accreditation Battle Over Canada's First Christian Law School
5. Michael Jackson's $1 Billion Tax Court Thriller: IRS Values His Name At $434,000,000, Estate Says $2,105
6. Simkovic: Law School Attendance, Happiness, And Success
7. IRS: The Tax Gap Is $458 Billion
8. Law School Rankings: Graduates Who Made Partner In AmLaw 100 In 2015
9. NY Times: Sun Capital Ruling On Pension Fund Debt Could Shake Up Private Equity Industry
10. Prof's Email To 1Ls Who Skipped Class: Con Law Is Way More Important Than Legal Writing Paper; 'Get Your Asses In Gear'

University Of Minnesota Study: Enhanced Individualized Feedback In One Core 1L Class Improves Student Performance In All Of Their Other Classes

Daniel Schwarcz (Minnesota) & Dion Farganis (Minnesota), The Impact of Individualized Feedback on Law Student Performance:

For well over a century, first-year law students have typically not received any individualized feedback in their core "doctrinal" classes other than their final exam grades. Although this pedagogical model has long been assailed by critics, remarkably limited empirical evidence exists regarding the extent to which enhanced feedback improves law students' outcomes. This Article helps fill this gap by focusing on a natural experiment at the University of Minnesota Law School.

The natural experiment arises from the random assignment of first-year law students to sections that take a common slate of classes, only some of which provide individualized feedback. Meanwhile, students in two different sections are occasionally grouped together into a "double section" first-year class. In these double section classes, students in sections that have previously or concurrently had a class providing individualized feedback consistently outperform students in sections that have not received any such feedback. The effect is both statistically significant and hardly trivial in magnitude, approaching about 1/3 of a grade increment even after controlling for students’ LSAT scores, undergraduate GPA, gender, race, and country of birth. The positive impact of feedback also appears to be stronger among lower-performing students.

These findings substantially advance the literature on law school pedagogy, demonstrating that individualized feedback in a single class during the first-year of law school can improve law students' performance in all of their other classes. Against the background of the broader literature on the importance of formative feedback in effective teaching, these findings also have a clear normative implication: law schools should systematically provide first-year law students with individualized feedback in at least one “core” doctrinal first-year class.

Note that the authors (at p.12) "defined individualized feedback to include assigning grades to individual students’ work products, providing individualized written comments to students, or providing individualized or small-group oral feedback to students. By contrast, we did not consider individualized feedback to include instances in which instructors provided students with only a model answer, grading rubric, or generalized oral comments regarding common mistakes."

Larry Solum (Georgetown):

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Lazear: America’s Coming Tax Increase

Wall Street Journal op-ed:  America’s Coming Tax Increase (data here), by Edward P. Lazear (Stanford):

The debt held by the public has approximately doubled since President Obama took office and is now equal to 74% of gross domestic product. It is true that with the right policy mix, economic growth—stuck at just over 2% during the Obama “recovery”—will help close federal deficits and pay down the debt. At the end of World War II, for example, the debt-to-GDP ratio was at 104% and shrank to a low of 23% by 1974. But letting growth or future belt-tightening close the gap is the exception, not the rule. More often, higher taxes are the result.

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Dr. Jayne Caron: My Baby Girl Is Going To Be A Doctor!

My beloved, brilliant, and beautiful daughter Jayne has decided to go to NYU Medical School in the fall.  We are so, so proud of Jayne, albeit a bit sad that she will not be going to med school closer to us in California (I blame Lin-Manuel Miranda.)  I am going to cherish these next few days in Madison helping her move out of her apartment after two years working at Epic Systems before she departs on a 2-month backpacking adventure in Europe on Wednesday.  For more on my journey with my amazing daughter, see:

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The IRS Scandal, Day 1087

Washington Post, Inside Republicans’ Backup Plan to Punish the IRS Chief:

Jason Chaffetz, chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, has been on a campaign since last October to impeach — literally — the tax collector.

But the Utah Republican has found little appetite among House leaders to call for a hearing, much less a vote to remove John Koskinen as head of the beleaguered Internal Revenue Service. Instead, Chaffetz says he is in conversations with his GOP colleagues about a vote on the lesser but still harsh charge of a censure.

“My foremost goal is impeachment and I’m not letting go of it,” Chaffetz said in an interview. “But if censure is the right precursor while we go through the process of educating our members, I have a [censure] bill drafted and ready to go.”

Chaffetz and his fellow Republicans have a slew of grievances against Koskinen’s management of the tax agency he took over in 2013, and last week the House passed six anti-I.R.S. bills by party-line votes to mark Tax Day.

But the effort to remove Koskinen stems from a scandal that preceded him — the IRS’s treatment of conservative groups applying for tax-exempt status. And since his five-year term ends in November 2017, the GOP effort to oust him could drag on beyond the Obama presidency.

Chaffetz says Koskinen should be impeached for violating the public trust and lying to Congress as it investigated the IRS’s singling out of conservative groups for scrutiny. The congressman has accused the commissioner of erasing back-up computer files containing thousands of e-mails written by Lois Lerner, the central IRS official in the scandal. Koskinen has told lawmakers his staff turned over all e-mails that were relevant to the investigation, and when some were found to be missing, said they were unrecoverable. ...

A censure resolution, rare in Congress’s modern history and far more common against lawmakers than government officials, would be a formal rebuke that states the House’s lack of confidence in Koskinen and calls on President Obama to fire him. It would fall short of outright impeachment, with no real consequence other than the announcement of the vote itself and a good measure of humiliation.

Democrats dismissed both efforts as wasteful partisanship. “Nobody who has examined this issue has identified any evidence of political targeting — not the Justice Department, not the Republican Inspector General of the IRS, and not even the Oversight Committee,” Rep. Elijah Cummings (D-Md.) the panel’s ranking member, said in a statement. “Republicans have wasted tens of millions of taxpayer dollars chasing false political conspiracy theories.” ...

House Speaker Paul D. Ryan (R-Wis.), when asked about the impeachment effort earlier this month, said “the IRS is not being led well” and “misled Americans” but stopped well short of backing Koskinen’s ouster. “What I think we need to do is win an election … get better people in these agencies and reform the tax code so we’re not harassing the average taxpayer with a tax code they can’t even understand,” Ryan said.

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WSJ Marks 100th Anniversary Of The Estate Tax, Asks What The Future Holds

Following up on my previous post, Paul L. Caron (Pepperdine), The One Hundredth Anniversary of the Federal Estate Tax: It's Time to Renew Our Vows, 57 B.C. L. Rev. ___ (2016) (more here):  Wall Street Journal Tax Report, Happy Anniversary! The Estate Tax Turns 100, by Laura Saunders:

In 1916, as World War I raged in Europe, Congress wanted to boost U.S. revenues in case America joined the fighting, so lawmakers voted for a new tax on a person’s assets at death. This levy affected fewer than 1% of Americans who died and raised less than 1% of federal revenue in 1917. ...

So began the modern U.S. estate tax. Today, the tax comes in the form of owing the government up to 40% of your assets at death, above an exemption of $5.45 million per person.

One hundred years later, experts across the political spectrum continue to debate if it should remain. While important details of the estate tax, such as rates and exemptions, have changed over the years, some fundamentals haven’t. ...

The U.S. estate tax has never affected many people, either. According to Paul Caron, an estate-tax specialist who teaches at Pepperdine Law School, it often has applied to fewer than 2% of those dying each year.

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Marian Presents The State Administration Of International Tax Avoidance Today At City University London

Omri Marian (UC-Irvine) presents The State Administration of International Tax Avoidance, 7 Harv. Bus. L. Rev. ___ (2016), at a Discussion Workshop on Corruption and the Role of Tax Havens at City University London:

This Article documents a process in which a national tax administration in one jurisdiction, is consciously and systematically assisting taxpayers to avoid taxes in other jurisdictions. The aiding tax administration collects a small amount tax from the aided taxpayers. Such tax is functionally structured as a fee paid for government-provided tax avoidance services. Such behavior can be easily copied (and probably is copied) by other tax administrations. The implications are profound. On the normative front, the findings should fundamentally change our understanding of the concept of international tax competition. Tax competition is generally understood to be the adoption of low tax rates in order to attract investments into the jurisdiction. Instead, this Article identifies an intentional “bagger thy neighbor” behavior, aimed at attracting revenue generated by successful investments in other jurisdictions, without attracting actual investments. The result is a distorted competitive environment, in which revenue is denied from jurisdictions the infrastructure and workforce of which support economically productive activity. On the practical front, the findings suggest that internationally coordinated efforts to combat tax avoidance are misaimed. Current efforts are largely aimed at curtailing aggressive taxpayer behavior. Instead, the Article proposes that the focus of such efforts should be curtailing certain rogue practices adopted by national tax administrations.

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Weekly Tax Roundup

• ABC News, Yale President Defends Ivy League School's Tax-Exempt Status
• Bloomberg, China's About to Start Its Biggest Tax Overhaul in Two Decades
• Bloomberg, EU Seeks Tax Deal to Counter Populists Bolstered by Panama Leaks
• Bloomberg, U.K.'s Top 1% of Earners Now Paying a Quarter of All Income Tax

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Weekly Legal Education Roundup

• Above the Law, Are Average Student Loan Debt Figures Misleading?
• Above the Law, Are Law Schools Just Liberal Indoctrination Factories?
• Above the Law, New York’s February Bar Exam Results Reveal Worst Pass Rates In More Than A Decade
• Eric Adams (Alberta), The Dean Who Went to Law School: Crossing Borders and Searching for Purpose in North American Legal Education, 1930-1950

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Weekly SSRN Tax Roundup

• Richard Ainsworth (Boston University), VAT Fraud Mutation, Part 2: CITIBank as a Transition, 81 Tax Notes Int'l 971 (Mar. 14, 2016)
• Celeste Black (Sydney), Tax Avoidance Scheme Penalties and Purpose
• Bret Bogenschneider (Vienna), Critical Legal Studies and Regressive Taxation in the United States
• Bret Bogenschneider (Vienna), How Helpful Is Econometrics to Tax Research?

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Weekly Student Tax Note Roundup

• Jane Song (J.D. 2015, Northwestern), Note, The End of Secret Swiss Accounts?: The Impact of the U.S. Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act (FATCA) on Switzerland's Status as a Haven for Offshore Accounts, 35 Nw. J. Int'l L. & Bus. 687 (2015)
• Thomas Vanik (J.D. 2015, Cleveland State), Note, Torpedoing A Transaction: Economic Substance Versus Other Tax Doctrines And The Application Of The Strict Liability Penalty, 64 Clev. St. L. Rev. 109 (2015)

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Tulane Is Seeking To Hire A Tax Visitor

Tulane Law School is seeking to hire a visiting tax professor for either Fall 2016 or the entire 2016-17 Academic Year:

Visitors would be expected to teach basic Income Tax and other tax related courses. Applicants at any career stage are encouraged. To apply, please submit a CV along with a statement of interest and any supporting documentation. Applications and questions may be directed to Vice Dean Ronald J. Scalise Jr.

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SSRN Tax Professor Rankings

SSRN has updated its monthly rankings 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 April 1, 2016) 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 (Mich.)	55,096	Reuven Avi-Yonah (Mich)	10,291
2	Michael Simkovic (S. Hall)	31,513	Michael Simkovic (S. Hall)	4590
3	Paul Caron (Pepperdine)	30,679	D. Dharmapala (Chicago)	3936
4	D. Dharmapala (Chicago)	26,229	Paul Caron (Pepperdine)	2316
5	Louis Kaplow (Harvard)	25,639	Richard Ainsworth (BU)	2218
6	Vic Fleischer (San Diego)	22,198	Jeff Kwall (Loyola-Chicago)	1892
7	James Hines (Michigan)	21,571	Robert Sitkoff (Harvard)	1863
8	Richard Kaplan (Illinois)	20,893	Nancy McLaughlin (Utah)	1737
9	Ted Seto (Loyola-L.A.)	20,843	Louis Kaplow (Harvard)	1737
10	Ed Kleinbard (USC)	19,617	David Weisbach (Chicago)	1635
11	Katie Pratt (Loyola-L.A.)	18,629	Jack Manhire (Texas A&M)	1622
12	Richard Ainsworth (BU)	17,517	Ed Kleinbard (USC)	1608
13	Carter Bishop (Suffolk)	16,821	Chris Hoyt (UMKC)	1605
14	Robert Sitkoff (Harvard)	16,772	Brad Borden (Brooklyn)	1586
15	Brad Borden (Brooklyn)	16,688	Omri Marian (UC-Irvine)	1580
16	David Weisbach (Chicago)	16,656	Dan Shaviro (NYU)	1549
17	Jen Kowal (Loyola-L.A.)	16,399	Vic Fleischer (San Diego)	1496
18	Chris Sanchirico (Penn)	16,270	Katie Pratt (Loyola-L.A.)	1405
19	Dennis Ventry (UC-Davis)	15,925	Steven Bank (UCLA)	1384
20	Francine Lipman (UNLV)	15,720	Richard Kaplan (Illinois)	1377
21	Bridget Crawford (Pace)	15,399	Gregg Polsky (N. Carolina)	1344
22	David Walker (BU)	14,917	Yariv Brauner (Florida)	1331
23	Dan Shaviro (NYU)	14,568	Chris Sanchirico (Penn)	1297
24	Steven Bank (UCLA)	13,194	William Byrnes  (Texas A&M)	1236
25	Herwig Schlunk (Vanderbilt)	13,131	Francine Lipman (UNLV)	1209

Note that this ranking includes full-time tax professors with at least one tax paper on SSRN, and all papers (including non-tax papers) by these tax professors are included in the SSRN data.

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Call For Papers: University Of Washington Symposium On Protecting Taxpayer Rights

The University of Washington’s Graduate Tax Program has issued a call for papers for its Fourth Annual Tax Symposium on October 7, 2016:

The 2016 Symposium will focus on Protecting Taxpayer Rights and feature keynote remarks by Nina E. Olson, the National Taxpayer Advocate.

Papers should be well developed, but at a stage where they can still benefit from the group’s discussion. Priority will be given to papers that are consistent with the chosen theme. The symposium will include twelve to fifteen papers. Dinner with the keynote speaker will be held on the day of the conference.

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IRS: The Tax Gap Is $458 Billion

IRS, Tax Gap Estimates for Tax Years 2008–2010:

The gross tax gap is the amount of true tax liability that is not paid voluntarily and timely. The estimated gross tax gap is $458 billion. ... The new estimates suggest that compliance is substantially unchanged since last estimated for TY 2006. Although the TY 2008–2010 gross and net tax gap estimates ($458 billion, $406 billion) are 1.8 percent and 5.5 percent higher, respectively, than the previously released TY 2006 estimates ($450 billion, $385 billion), those increases are driven by improvements in the accuracy and comprehensiveness of the estimates through updates in methods and the inclusion of new tax gap components.

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The IRS Scandal, Day 1086

Wall Street Journal, House Republicans Seek to Block IRS Collection of Nonprofit Donor Data:

House Republicans are expanding their assault on the Internal Revenue Service, this time trying to prevent the agency from collecting information about nonprofit groups’ donors.

The latest effort, led by Rep. Peter Roskam (R., Ill.), would change a requirement that nonprofits list all donors who give at least $5,000. That information is supposed to be redacted from the publicly available versions of the groups’ tax forms, but the IRS has inadvertently released donor information about the National Organization for Marriage and a group tied to the Republican Governors Association.

To Mr. Roskam and other Republicans, those failures are a reason to keep clamping down on the agency. “The IRS has demonstrated inability to hold confidential information close, and if it’s not necessary for tax administration, then let’s mitigate this problem and not require organizations to submit it,” he said. The House Ways and Means Committee approved his measure Thursday on a 23-15 party-line vote. ...

The IRS is never popular, but Republicans have been particularly agitated about the tax agency since 2013, when it said it had improperly given extra scrutiny to Tea Party groups seeking tax-exempt status. The agency’s leadership has since changed, but Republicans have maintained pressure and sought to limit its budget. ...

Under Mr. Roskam’s bill, nonprofits would only have to report information tied to certain tax shelters as well as donations from their directors, top employees and officers. The bill would also limit the information available to state charity regulators. A federal court last week ruled that California’s requirement to submit donor names to the state was unconstitutional.

Philip Hackney, a tax law professor at Louisiana State University, said the bill would make it harder for the IRS to police the line between charities and private foundations, the latter being subject to stricter rules. He said it might also be more difficult for the IRS to monitor self-dealing between a charity and its donors. “I think it’s problematic to not collect it, but I do respect the fact that there are some real disclosure issues that have been perennial,” Mr. Hackney said.

New York Times editorial, Dark Money and an I.R.S. Blindfold:

Under the proposal, the I.R.S. would no longer be told the identities of contributors to these nonprofits. Watchdog groups warn in a letter to the House that this would “open the door wide for secret, unaccountable money from foreign governments, foreign corporations and foreign individuals to be illegally laundered into federal elections.” The letter, signed by the Brennan Center for Justice, the Campaign Legal Center, Democracy 21 and five other groups, stressed that the disclosure requirement is one of the few ways of guarding against foreigners influencing American elections.

Representative Peter Roskam, the bill’s sponsor, dismissed the reform groups’ warning, saying the I.R.S. “has a miserable track record when it comes to safeguarding sensitive data” and a history of targeting conservative nonprofits that are critical of administration policies. His office insisted that ending the disclosure requirement would not affect the foreign-donation ban, but the reform groups sensibly ask who else could monitor what has become a runaway system of big-money stealth politicking. ...

Amid fierce Republican criticism, the I.R.S. has grown ever more gun-shy about enforcement, with Tea Party and other right-wing groups accusing tax officials of bias in daring to investigate conservative “social welfare” claims. As I.R.S. wariness grows, so does the attraction of 501(c)s for donors more interested in stealth politicking than charity work. Enabling foreigners to join this dark money debacle would be disastrous.

• Accounting Today, House Committee Passes IRS Legislation on Identity Theft, Missing Children and Tax-Exempt Donors
• Daily Caller, Bill Protecting Nonprofit Donor Identities From IRS Passes Committee
• The Hill, House Panel Moves Bill to Ban IRS From Tracking Donors to Tax-Exempt Groups
• Politico, Does the IRS Need That Information?
• USA Today, House Panel Approves Koch-Backed Bill to Shield Donors' Names from the IRS

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Prof's Email To 1Ls Who Skipped Class: Con Law Is Way More Important Than Legal Writing Paper; 'Get Your Asses In Gear'

Above the Law, Con Law Professor Has Meltdown In Email Blast To Students:

Look, being a law professor is rough. Especially if one finds himself teaching a gaggle of Younglings who don’t quite yet “Think Like A Lawyer". ... [W]e understand why Professor Steven Winter lost it on his students at Wayne State Law. We may not wholly agree, but it’s easy to see where he’s coming from.

There were way too many people — about 30% of the class — absent today. This is unacceptable.

A handful had valid excuses (although pinkeye isn't really one of them). For the rest of you, missing class because you have a legal writing paper is neither a valid excuse nor an exercise of good judgment.

It is not just that Con Law is way more important (to your education, not to mention your GPA) than legal writing. As I told those who were there the single best predictor of bar passage is your grade in Con Law. And standing usually is one third of the exam. So all of you who were out today are already significantly behind the eight ball.

So get your asses in gear.

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How Big Is The Income Tax Gap In Your State?

HowMuch.net, How Big is the Income Tax Gap in Your State?:

Most states have progressive tax systems: high-income earners pay a higher percentage of their income in tax. But some states are fiscally more progressive than others, resulting in a bigger difference between those taxed least and those taxed most. Again, California leads the nation, with a tax gap of 9.31% - that’s how much more those in the top bracket are taxed than those in the bottom one. New Jersey comes in second, at some distance (6.60%). Vermont, Minnesota and Hawaii all have tax gaps over 5%.

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The Intersection Of EU State Aid And U.S. Tax Deferral

Romero J.S. Tavares, Bret N. Bogenschneider & Marta Pankiv (Vienna University), The Intersection of EU State Aid and U.S. Tax Deferral: A Spectacle of Fireworks, Smoke, and Mirrors, 21 Fla. Tax Rev. ___ (2017):

The Advance Pricing Agreements or transfer pricing rulings granted to U.S. multinationals by Ireland, the Netherlands, and Luxembourg were principally designed to achieve U.S. tax deferral and not EU tax avoidance. Adverse BEPS effects within the European Union would be immaterial in comparison to the deferral of U.S. tax on residual IP related profits, and would have occurred primarily in countries other than those charged with the granting of unlawful State aid. The Irish, Dutch, and Luxembourgish treasuries have not foregone tax revenues in favor of the U.S. multinationals they allegedly aided, which is a requirement for a finding of prohibited State aid.

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Law School Rankings By Employment Outcomes: Florida, Texas

Following up on my previous posts on Law School Rankings By Employment Outcomes:

• California
• D.C./Maryland/Virginia
• New York
• Ohio

Derek Muller (Pepperdine) blogs legal employment outcomes among Florida's 11 law schools and Texas's 9 law schools:

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George Mason Faculty Senate Votes 21-13 To Oppose Naming Law School For Justice Scalia

George Mason's Faculty Senate voted 21-13 yesterday to condemn naming the law school in Justice Scalia's honor.

• BuzzFeed
• Chronicle of Higher Education
• National Law Journal
• New York Times
• Wall Street Journal
• Washington Post

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The U.S. News Law School Rankings: Engines Of Anxiety

Wendy Nelson Espeland (Northwestern) & Michael Sauder (Iowa), Engines of Anxiety: Academic Rankings, Reputation, and Accountability (Russell Sage Foundation 2016):

Students and the public routinely consult various published college rankings to assess the quality of colleges and universities and easily compare different schools. However, many institutions have responded to the rankings in ways that benefit neither the schools nor their students. In Engines of Anxiety, sociologists Wendy Espeland and Michael Sauder delve deep into the mechanisms of law school rankings, which have become a top priority within legal education. Based on a wealth of observational data and over 200 in-depth interviews with law students, university deans, and other administrators, they show how the scramble for high rankings has affected the missions and practices of many law schools.

Engines of Anxiety tracks how rankings, such as those published annually by the U.S. News & World Report, permeate every aspect of legal education, beginning with the admissions process. The authors find that prospective law students not only rely heavily on such rankings to evaluate school quality, but also internalize rankings as expressions of their own abilities and flaws. For example, they often view rejections from “first-tier” schools as a sign of personal failure. The rankings also affect the decisions of admissions officers, who try to balance admitting diverse classes with preserving the school’s ranking, which is dependent on factors such as the median LSAT score of the entering class. Espeland and Sauder find that law schools face pressure to admit applicants with high test scores over lower-scoring candidates who possess other favorable credentials.

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NY Times: President Obama Weighs His Economic And Tax Legacy

New York Times Magazine:  President Obama Weighs His Economic Legacy, by Andrew Ross Sorkin:

Eight years after the financial crisis, unemployment is at 5 percent, deficits are down and G.D.P. is growing. Why do so many voters feel left behind? The president has a theory.

Two months ago, across an assembly-room table in a factory in Jacksonville, Fla., President Barack Obama was talking to me about the problem of political capital. His efforts to rebuild the U.S. economy from the 2008 financial crisis were being hit from left, right and center. And yet, by his own assessment, those efforts were vastly underappreciated. “I actually compare our economic performance to how, historically, countries that have wrenching financial crises perform,” he said. “By that measure, we probably managed this better than any large economy on Earth in modern history.”

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NY Times: Fantasy Math Is Helping Companies Spin Losses Into Profits

New York Times:  Fantasy Math Is Helping Companies Spin Losses Into Profits, by Gretchen Morgenson:

Companies, if granted the leeway, will surely present their financial results in the best possible light. And of course they will try to persuade investors that the calculations they prefer, in which certain costs are excluded, best represent the reality in their operations.

Call it accentuating the positive, accounting-style.

What’s surprising, though, is how willing regulators have been to allow the proliferation of phony-baloney financial reports and how keenly investors have embraced them. As a result, major public companies reporting results that are not based on generally accepted accounting principles, or GAAP, has grown from a modest problem into a mammoth one.

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Is Social Security Tilted Toward the Rich?

New York Times:  Rich People Are Living Longer. That’s Tilting Social Security in Their Favor, by Neil Irwin:

Social Security is designed to ensure that no workers go penniless in old age and also as an equalizer between rich and poor. It is structured to give more generous retirement benefits to low-income people, given the taxes they pay during their working years. ...

[A] large body of research shows that the rich live longer — and that the life span gap between rich and poor is growing. And that means that the progressive ideal built into the design of Social Security is, gradually, being thwarted. In some circumstances, the program can actually be regressive, offering richer benefits to those who are already affluent.

Daniel Hemel (Chicago), Is Social Security Tilted Toward the Rich?:

A fascinating column in the New York Times Sunday Business section claims that the growing life span gap between the rich and the poor is undermining the Social Security system’s redistributive design. ...

The Times’ analysis, if correct, is quite dispiriting for those of us who favor greater redistribution of wealth and considered Social Security to be a great progressive achievement. But is it correct? I’m doubtful. That’s because — as best I can tell — the Times’ analysis fails to account for the tax treatment of Social Security benefits. And once one accounts for the taxation of Social Security benefits, the system begins to look a lot more progressive than the Times’ analysis suggests. ...

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Write A Blog Post, Get An 'A' In Your Tax Class

Forbes:  Get Published And Win An A In Tax Law, by Kelly Phillips Erb:

That’s right, I said, “Win an A in Tax Law.” My popular contest for law and paralegal students is back. So let’s get right to the good stuff…

Here’s how it works: simply write a guest post for consideration on the site about a hot tax policy issue. I don’t mean a news or legal summary. I want a policy post: tell me what the issue is and why it matters. In other words, pick a topic and take a position. ...

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The IRS Scandal, Day 1085

American Thinker:  IRS Dereliction Aids California AG's Donor Privacy Violations, by Mark J. Fitzgibbons:

California's Democrat attorney general, Kamala Harris, was recently slapped down by a federal judge for violating the First Amendment in a donor privacy case brought by conservative nonprofit Americans for Prosperity Foundation. The Internal Revenue Service needs to shoulder a substantial part of the blame for that case, because the IRS could and should have prevented Harris's lawlessness.

AFPF was granted an injunction against Ms. Harris on April 21 prohibiting her from demanding the nonprofit organization's donor names and addresses listed on confidential federal tax return "Schedule B." At trial, AFPF presented "ample evidence" that its donors received "threats, harassment, intimidation, and retaliation" for their private association with the organization. The right of private association is constitutionally guaranteed as expressed in the 1958 landmark civil rights case NAACP v. Alabama.

General Harris is acquiring confidential Schedule B donor names using a dragnet registration method for charities that communicate with fundraising appeals to Californians. The injunction order noted that Harris's claims for needing Schedule B donor information for law enforcement purposes was not credible, given the lack of an enforcement track record and the availability of such information from other sources on a case-by-case basis.

Judge Manuel Real's order was blunt, noting that "the amount of careless mistakes by the Attorney General's registry is shocking," and "[t]he pervasive, recurring pattern of uncontained Schedule B disclosures [is] irreconcilable with the Attorney General's assurances and contentions as to the confidentiality of Schedule Bs collected by the Registry." ...

What hasn't been reported is how the IRS could have prevented this mess. The federal tax code gives the IRS control over the flow of confidential federal tax return to state officials, who may actually need it to enforce laws. By its own interpretations of the law, the IRS requires states to enter into confidentiality agreements and establish protocols to prevent precisely what California did in accessing and publicly disclosing Schedule Bs.

The IRS's failure to act to protect confidential donor information on Schedule Bs means it may be treated as an "indispensable party" in litigation brought by other charities. Also, Congress should investigate why the IRS was derelict in protecting the confidentiality of donors, and whether Ms. Harris is acting as an Obama IRS surrogate in hampering First Amendment rights of conservative organizations such as AFPF and others.

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Law School LL.M.s: 'Encouraging International Cultural Diversity Or Cynical Method Of Revenue Generation'?

Steven J. Harper (Adjunct Professor, Northwestern; author, The Lawyer Bubble), Warm Bodies:

Colleges have entered a game that law schools have been playing for years. According to a recent New York Times front page headline, “Colleges Seek Warm Bodies From Overseas.” The title of the online version was equally pointed: “Recruiting Students Overseas to Fill Seats, Not to Meet Standards."

For years, law schools have been dropping standards to fill classrooms. Marginal schools have been the worst offenders, and the profession is now paying the price in declining bar passage rates. But even among top schools, a more subtle and profitable technique has pervaded law school business plans for years: expanding LLM programs.

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Organ: Fall 2016 Law School Enrollment Projections

Jerry Organ (St. Thomas), Projections for Law School Enrollment for Fall 2016:

In this blog posting I am doing two things. First, I provide a detailed analysis to estimate the likely total applicant pool we can expect at the end of the current cycle based on trends from March through the end of the cycle in 2013 and 2014 and 2015. Second, given the increase in the strength of the applicant pool, I suggest that law schools in the top 60 or 70 of USNEWS ranking will see more enrollment growth and profile stability in comparison with law schools further down the rankings continuum. ...

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Video Of Tom Bost's Last Class At Pepperdine

Following up on yesterday's post, Tom Bost's Last Class At Pepperdine:

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Ventry: Lawyers As Whistleblowers

Dennis J. Ventry, Jr. (UC-Davis), Stiches for Snitches: Lawyers as Whistleblowers, 50 U.C. Davis L. Rev. ___ (2017):

This Article challenges the prevailing wisdom that ethics rules forbid lawyers from blowing the whistle on a client’s illegal conduct. While a lawyer is not free to disclose confidential information in every jurisdiction for every legal violation, the ethics rules in all jurisdictions permit disclosure of confidential information pertaining to a client’s illegal activities under certain conditions. Proving the lie of the prevailing wisdom, this Article examines a high profile case in the state of New York that ruled a lawyer whistleblower violated the state’s ethics rules by revealing confidential information to stop his employer-client from engaging in a tax fraud of epic proportions. The Article argues that the court undertook a deficient analysis of New York ethics rules pertaining to permissive disclosure of confidential client information. Even if the whistleblower had violated his ethical obligations, the New York False Claims Act (the statute under which he brought his action) expressly protects disclosure of confidential employer information made in furtherance of the statute. In addition to New York’s statutory shield, federal courts across the country have developed a public policy exception safeguarding whistleblowers for disclosing confidential information that detects and exposes an employer’s illegal conduct.

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Call For Papers: AALS Program On Philanthrocapitalism

Call for Papers:  Joint Program of the AALS Sections on Agency, Partnerships LLCs, and Unincorporated Associations & Nonprofit and Philanthropy on LLCs, New Charitable Forms, and the Rise of Philanthrocapitalism:

In December 2015, Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg and his wife, Dr. Priscilla Chan, pledged their personal fortune—then valued at $45 billion—to the Chan-Zuckerberg Initiative (CZI), a philanthropic effort aimed at “advancing human potential and promoting equality.” But instead of organizing CZI using a traditional charitable structure, the couple organized CZI as a for-profit Delaware LLC. CZI is perhaps the most notable example, but not the only example, of Silicon Valley billionaires exploiting the LLC form to advance philanthropic efforts. But are LLCs and other for-profit business structures compatible with philanthropy? What are the tax, governance, and other policy implications of this new tool of philanthrocapitalism? What happens when LLCs, rather than traditional charitable forms, are used for “philanthropic” purposes?

From the heart of Silicon Valley, the AALS Section on Agency, Partnerships LLCs, and Unincorporated Associations and Section on Nonprofit and Philanthropy Law will host a joint program tackling these timely issues. In addition to featuring invited speakers, we seek speakers (and papers) selected from this call.

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Foundation Press Publishes Election Law Stories (36th Book in the Law Stories Series)

Foundation Press has published Election Law Stories (2016), by Joshua A. Douglas (Kentucky) & Eugene D. Mazo (Rutgers):

One of the most dynamic fields in the legal academy now has its own Stories book. This title offers a rich and detailed account of the most significant cases in election law, including the landmark decisions of Reynolds v. Sims, Bush v. Gore, Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission, and Shelby County v. Holder. The book relies on a unique encapsulated approach to storytelling, as each of its authors surveys an important doctrinal area in the field through the telling of his or her story. The volume’s thirteen cases concern the right to vote, redistricting and gerrymandering, campaign finance, and election administration. The book is suited for courses in the law of democracy at both the graduate and undergraduate levels.

The table of contents is here.  Other titles in the Law Stories Series (for which I serve as Series Editor) are:

• Administrative Law Stories (2006), edited by Peter L. Strauss (Columbia)
• Antitrust Stories (2007), edited by Eleanor M. Fox (NYU) & Daniel A. Crane (Cardozo)
• Bankruptcy Law Stories (2007), edited by Robert Rasmussen (USC)
• Business Tax Stories (2005), edited by Steven A. Bank (UCLA) & Kirk J. Stark (UCLA) -
• Civil Procedure Stories (2d ed. 2008), edited by Kevin M. Clermont (Cornell)
• Civil Rights Stories  (2008), edited by Myriam Gilles (Cardozo) & Risa Goluboff (Virginia) -
• Constitutional Law Stories (2d ed. 2009), edited by Michael C. Dorf (Cornell)
• Contracts Stories (2006), edited by Douglas G. Baird (Chicago)
• Corporate Law Stories  (2009), edited by J. Mark Ramseyer (Harvard)
• Criminal Law Stories (2013), edited by Donna Coker (Miami) & Robert Weisberg (Stanford)
• Criminal Procedure Stories (2006), edited by Carol S. Steiker (Harvard)
• Death Penalty Stories  (2009), edited by John H. Blum (Cornell) & Jordan M. Steiker (Texas)
• Education Law Stories (2008), edited by Michael A. Olivas (Houston) & Ronna Greff Schneider (Cincinnati)
• Employment Discrimination Stories (2006), edited by Joel William Friedman (Tulane)
• Employment Law Stories (2007), edited by Samuel Estreicher (NYU) & Gillian Lester (UC-Berkeley)
• Environmental Law Stories (2005), edited by Richard J. Lazarus (Harvard) & Oliver A. Houck (Tulane)
• Evidence Stories (2006), edited by Richard O. Lempert (Michigan)
• Family Law Stories (2008), edited by Carol Sanger (Columbia)
• Federal Courts Stories (2010), edited by Vicki C. Jackson (Georgetown) & Judith Resnik (Yale)
• First Amendment Stories (2011), edited by Richard W. Garnett (Notre Dame) & Andrew Koppelman (Northwestern)
• Human Rights Advocacy Stories (2008), edited by Deena R. Hurwitz (Virginia) & Margaret L. Satterthwaite (NYU), with Doug Ford (Virginia)
• Immigration Stories (2005), edited by David A. Martin (Virginia) & Peter H. Schuck (Yale)
• Indian Law Stories (2011), edited by Carole E. Goldberg (UCLA), Kevin K. Washburn (Dean, New Mexico) & Philip P. Frickey (UC-Berkeley)
• Intellectual Property Stories (2005), edited by Jane C. Ginsburg (Columbia) & Rochelle Cooper Dreyfuss (NYU)
• International Law Stories (2007), edited by John Noyes (California Western), Mark Janis (Connecticut) & Laura Dickinson (Connecticut)
• Labor Law Stories (2005), edited by Laura J. Cooper (Minnesota) & Catherine L. Fisk (Duke)
• Legal Ethics Stories (2005), edited by Deborah L. Rhode (Stanford) & David Luban (Georgetown)
• Presidential Power Stories (2008), edited by Christopher H. Schroeder (Duke) & Curtis A. Bradley (Duke)
• Property Stories (2d ed. 2009), edited by Gerald Korngold (New York Law School) & Andrew P. Morriss (Dean, Texas A&M)
• Race Law Stories  (2008), edited by by Rachel F. Moran (UCLA) & Devon Carbado (UCLA)
• Statutory Interpretation Stories (2011), edited by William N. Eskridge, Jr. (Yale), Philip P. Frickey (UC-Berkeley) & Elizabeth Garrett (President, Cornell)
• Tax Stories (2d ed. 2009), edited by Paul L. Caron (Pepperdine)
• Torts Stories (2003), edited by Robert L. Rabin (Stanford) & Stephen D. Sugarman (UC-Berkeley)
• Trial Stories (2008), edited by Michael E. Tigar (American) & Angela J. Davis (American)
• Women and the Law Stories (2011), edited by Elizabeth M. Schneider (Brooklyn) & Stephanie M. Wildman (Santa Clara)

Pew: 54% Of Adults With Post-Graduate Education Are Liberal, 24% Are Conservative

Pew Research Center, A Wider Ideological Gap Between More and Less Educated Adults:

Two years ago, Pew Research Center found that Republicans and Democrats were more divided along ideological lines than at any point in the previous two decades. But growing ideological distance is not confined to partisanship. There are also growing ideological divisions along educational and generational lines.

Highly educated adults – particularly those who have attended graduate school – are far more likely than those with less education to take predominantly liberal positions across a range of political values. And these differences have increased over the past two decades.

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America Changes, But All the Presidential Candidates Want To Keep the Tax Code the Same

The Daily Beast:  America Changes, But All the Presidential Candidates Want To Keep the Tax Code the Same, by David Cay Johnston:

The tax reform plans of the five remaining presidential candidates tell us a lot about our outdated federal tax system, which was designed for the industrial economy of the last century. All five candidates promise reform, but their plans just tinker around the edges. None of the five addresses the major reasons the federal tax system imposes far more economic pain than necessary on most Americans.

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May 1 Deadline For Call For Papers For NTA 109th Annual Conference On Taxation

The National Tax Association has issued a Call for Papers for its 109th Annual Conference on Taxation to be held Nov. 10-12, 2016 in Baltimore:

The 109th Annual Conference on Taxation will cover a broad range of topics including, but not limited to, taxation and tax policies; expenditure policies; government budgeting; intergovernmental fiscal relations; and subnational, national, and international public finance. The conference will focus, as always, on policy-relevant research bearing on taxation and government spending.

You are invited to submit a paper or a complete session. May 1, 2016 is the deadline for submitting papers or sessions. Decisions concerning the inclusion of papers and sessions will be announced in July 2016. Authors of accepted papers will be offered the opportunity to include them in the Proceedings. All presenters will be required to register and pay a conference registration fee.

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The Hillary Speech Issue No One Is Talking About: Assignment Of Income

Forbes:  The Hillary Speech Issue No One Is Talking About, by Robert W. Wood:

There are long lists of Hillary Clinton scandals, but the vortex of issues surrounding her speeches remains a major one. The speech issue is multi-faceted, raising questions about what she said to whom and at what price. In this sense, Hillary may be her own worst enemy. She has stalled endlessly, and has still failed to release the transcripts. That kind of stonewalling fuels more speculation, and it is hardly in her favor.

For example, you can read an amusing imagined text of Hillary’s speech to Goldman Sachs. We presumably will never see the real one, though it can hardly be worse than an imagined version. Arguably, though, just as major an issue is the money trail from Hillary’s speeches. The data has had to be teased out. However, the connections between a former President and Secretary of State hobnobbing with foreign government and corporate chieftains over U.S. policy issues remains of interest. The money was big for Bill and Hillary, with even some for Chelsea.

And just think of the tax treatment.

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ABA Teleconference Today On The Tax Code And Income Inequality

The ABA Section of Civil Rights and Social Justice and the ABA Tax Section are offering a free teleconference today at 3:30 - 5:00 EST on The Tax Code and Income Inequality: Limitations and Political Opportunities:

“Welfare” has become “workfare,” delivered through the Tax Code, e.g., the Earned Income Tax Credit and Child Tax Credit. How well is that really working for low and middle income Americans, much less those in poverty? At the same time, tax deductions, credits—and avoidance/evasion schemes—are increasingly benefitting wealthy individuals and big corporations, which increasingly pay a smaller portion of federal tax revenue—revenue that could fund government programs, bolster economic growth and benefit the bottom 99% by providing jobs and increase skills of lower income American. Panelists will discuss how changes to the Tax Code can address income inequality in the U.S. and political opportunities for reform.

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The IRS Scandal, Day 1084

Forbes:  Should IRS Pay Employee Bonuses? Recall Lois Lerner's $129,300 On Top Of Salary, by Robert W. Wood:

Should IRS employees receive bonuses, and based on what? The topic is controversial–again–although perhaps not as vitriolic as it was during the Lois Lerner targeting episode. Recall that the face of IRS targeting, Lois Lerner–who took the Fifth and refused to testify about it–received big cash bonuses. So did the fired Acting IRS Commissioner Miller who was also caught up in the targeting scandal. (Yes, it is tempting to ask, ‘bonuses for what?’)

These bonuses were not small pats on the back. In fact, Lois Lerner received $129,300 in bonuses between 2010 and 2013. As head of the IRS tax-exempt division at the  heart of the targeting scandal, she received a 25% bonus each year—averaging $43,000 a year—on top of her regular salary. As you read about bonuses, you might recall other reports saying that 61% of IRS employees caught willfully violating the tax law aren’t fired, but may get promoted. Many of the bonuses can be traced to IRS Commissioner Koskinen, who took the helm of the IRS in December 2013.

His tenure hasn’t been smooth. Most of the IRS bonuses were paid in February and March 2014, with 238 awards totaling $976,387. No further awards were recorded until November and January 2015, with 218 awards totaling $1,000,108. In all, the IRS paid 1,269 bonuses, totaling $5.97 million from January 1, 2010 to February 2, 2015. The average was $4,483, but totals ranged from $250 to $285,688. There is considerable detail on the bonuses here.

And with this kind of track record in the face of scandal, perhaps it is no wonder that there is a House Bill, H.R. 4890, called the IRS Bonuses Tied to Measurable Metrics Act. Sponsored by Rep. Pat Meehan, R-Pa., it would prohibit the IRS from paying bonuses to employees until the Treasury Secretary develops and implements a comprehensive customer service strategy that puts taxpayers first. The House Ways and Means Committee passed four IRS bills recently, and the House voted to approve several. Yet Rep. Sander Levin, D-Mich., the ranking Democrat on the House Ways and Means Committee, objected to tying IRS employee bonuses to the development of a customer service strategy. ...

There are plenty of hard-working and honest employees at the IRS. They do a terribly important job under tough circumstances, and it is usually a thankless job. Maybe they do deserve bonuses. Perhaps there might be agreement on this, especially if they could hang up a big ’Under New Management’ sign.

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Tom Bost's Last Class At Pepperdine

Today was a day of transitions at Pepperdine, as legendary Tax Prof Tom Bost retired after 16 years on the faculty, following an illustrious 31 year career as a tax associate and then partner at Latham & Watkins in Los Angeles.  Tom served for many years as member and chair of Pepperdine's Board of Regent and was Interim Dean when Pepperdine hired me (the only black mark on his otherwise distinguished career).  Like everyone at Pepperdine, I have enormous respect and affection for Tom, and will miss his daily presence in our lives.

We shamelessly stole the idea from Michigan and organized a moving "clap-off" send-off for Tom's last class today, as the faculty and staff joined with Tom's students in sending him out of a Pepperdine classroom for the last time to thunderous applause (and not a few tears). Pepperdine will forever more be a profoundly different place because of this extraordinary man.

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Pepperdine Dean Deanell Tacha To Retire On Dec. 31, 2016

Pepperdine President Andy Benton and Provost Rick Marrs today announced that our wonderful Dean Deanell Tacha is extending her five-year term to continue serving through our ABA Re-Accreditation visit in Fall 2016 and will retire on December 31, 2016:

Deanell Reece Tacha, who has served as dean of the Pepperdine University School of Law since 2011, will retire on December 31, 2016. Deanell will continue her tenure at the School of Law during the American Bar Association accreditation process through fall 2016.

The first female dean of the School of Law, Deanell came to Pepperdine prepared to confront the challenges facing legal education, including a crippling debt crisis and an often unreliable job market. In her five years at the school, Deanell tirelessly raised money for student scholarships to assist with rising tuition costs, traveled cross-country to advocate for post-graduation job placements for Pepperdine Law students, and built relationships with leading legal scholars and thought leaders to develop a more robust faculty. She also led the effort to fully remodel the school to dramatically improve the 40-year-old facility.

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Zelenak Presents Tax-Free Basis Step-Up At Death And The Charitable Deduction Of Unrealized Appreciation Today At Georgetown

Lawrence Zelenak (Duke) presents The Tax-Free Basis Step-Up at Death, the Charitable Deduction of Unrealized Appreciation, and the Persistence of Error at Georgetown today as part of its Tax Law and Public Finance Workshop Series hosted by John Brooks and Itai Grinberg:

This article recounts, as a study in the remarkable persistence of early error even when the error is promptly recognized and addressed, the legislative and administrative histories of the taxfree basis step-up at death and the charitable deduction for unrealized appreciation. Part I describes the early development of the basis rules for property transferred by gift or bequest, and Part II covers the early history of the charitable deduction for appreciated property. Parts III and IV are concerned with less ancient events. Part III recounts the short unhappy life of the 1976 carryover basis reform, and Part IV does the same for the 1986 AMT reform. Part V briefly concludes.

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Gravelle Presents Policy Options To Address Corporate Profit Shifting: Carrots Or Sticks? Today At NYU

Jane Gravelle (Congressional Research Service) presents Policy Options to Address Corporate Profit Shifting: Carrots or Sticks? at NYU today as part of its Tax Policy Colloquium Series hosted by Daniel Shaviro and Chris Sanchirico:

Issues surrounding the U.S. tax treatment of foreign source income, focused in large part in the past on real investment, may, to some degree, have given way to concern about tax minimization strategies that allow firms to shift profits into low and no tax countries. Firms can benefit from profit shifting because, although the United States has a worldwide income tax system with a credit for foreign taxes paid, income earned by U.S. multinationals’ foreign subsidiaries is not subject to tax until it is repatriated, that is, paid to the parent firm as a dividend. (Current law requires some income easily subject to abuse, called Subpart F income, to be taxed currently). In addition, firms can shield repatriated profits from low tax countries from U.S. tax if they have excess foreign tax credits from operations in high tax countries. Profit shifting is largely a problem of lost revenue rather than inefficient location of investment, although widespread manipulation of the tax rules to avoid taxes also may undermine voluntary compliance with the tax system by others.

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Prince Died Without A Will, According To Court Documents

New York Times, Prince Died Without a Will, According to Court Documents:

Prince died without a will, according to court documents filed by his sister, which may cause complications for his financial estate and musical legacy.

In probate documents filed on Tuesday with the court in Carver County, Minn., Tyka Nelson, 55, Prince’s sister, said that her brother died without a spouse, children or surviving parents, and that “I do not know of the existence of a will.” ...

In addition to Ms. Nelson, the document lists five half-siblings of Prince as interested parties: his half-brothers John Nelson, Alfred Jackson and Omar Baker, and his half-sisters Norrine and Sharon Nelson. According to Minnesota law, surviving half-siblings are treated the same as full siblings. ..

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Ex-Sprint Heads Blame IRS For Tax Shelter Woes 13 Years Ago

Bloomberg, Ex-Sprint Heads Blame IRS for Tax Shelter Woes 13 Years Ago:

The two top Sprint Corp. executives who were caught up in a tax-shelter scandal in 2003 now blame the Internal Revenue Service for losing their jobs.

Former Chairman and Chief Executive Officer William T. Esrey and Ronald T. LeMay, a former president and chief operating officer, sued the U.S. government Friday over claims they were unfairly forced out of the company after disclosing they were being audited over the use of shelters that deferred taxes from stock option profits. The two men are seeking almost $160 million in combined damages in a complaint filed in Manhattan federal court.

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Michael Rich (Elon) On His Metastatic Kidney Cancer Diagnosis

Michael Rich (Elon), Hard Prawf Choices:

A little less than three years ago, I was diagnosed with metastatic kidney cancer, a disease that does not lend itself to optimistic prognoses. I have been fortunate to be able to continue prawfing since then, but it has changed the way I understand my job and interact with my students and the prawf community.

One of my first challenges was deciding how much of my situation to share with my students. I pride myself on treating my students as much like adults as possible. So, the first semester after my diagnosis, knowing that treatment would interfere with their class schedule, I shared with them the general diagnosis (cancer) and let them know that it would require flexibility on their part. I also reconfirmed my commitment to them to do my best and to be available when I could. That semester was challenging, but the students were incredibly generous and forgiving. Since then, however, I've tended to share less and less with my students. I don't tell them I have cancer. I simply explain cancellations by pointing vaguely to medical necessity. The change didn't came about because I trust these students any less than the others, but because the process of disclosure was hard and I don't want to add my problems to the preexisting stress of law school. Moreover, my current set of treatments are not as disruptive to class schedules as the first ones were. I wonder sometimes if this is right decision -- if I value setting boundaries between myself and my students too much -- but fortunately my students have continued to be flexible and generous.

Another challenge has been whether to disclose my disease broadly. ...

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Hillary Clinton And Donald Trump Share A Delaware Tax Loophole Address

Gawker, Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump Share a Delaware Tax Loophole Address:

Thanks to Delaware’s strict corporate secrecy laws, more than 285,000 companies are registered, for tax reasons, at a two-story building in Wilmington—more than any other address in the world. Among them are holding companies belonging to Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump.

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Interest In Negative Income Tax Spreads: 'Freeing The World Of Bullshit Jobs'

FiveThirtyEight, What Would Happen If We Just Gave People Money?:

Daniel Straub remembers the night he got hooked on basic income. He had invited Götz Werner, a billionaire owner of a German drugstore chain, to give an independent talk in Zurich, where Straub was working as a project manager for a think tank. He had read an article about the radical proposal to unconditionally guarantee citizens an income and spent a few years casually researching the idea. Straub had heard Werner was a good speaker on the topic, and that night in 2009 he was indeed excellent at connecting with the audience, a sold-out house of 200. “It was a very intense evening; people were paying attention,” Straub recalled.

Werner posed a pair of simple questions to the crowd: What do you really want to do with your life? Are you doing what you really want to do? Whatever the answers, he suggested basic income was the means to achieve those goals. The idea is as simple as it is radical: Rather than concern itself with managing myriad social welfare and unemployment insurance programs, the government would instead regularly cut a no-strings-attached check to each citizen. No conditions. No questions. Everyone, rich or poor, employed or out of work would get the same amount of money. This arrangement would provide a path toward a new way of living: If people no longer had to worry about making ends meet, they could pursue the lives they want to live. ...

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Former UC-Berkeley Law School Dean Files Grievance Over Attempt To Revoke His Tenure In Wake Of Sexual Harassment Complaint

Former UC-Berkeley Law School Dean Sujit Choudhry, who resigned last month amidst a sexual harassment scandal, which prompted calls for the revocation of his faculty tenure, has filed a grievance with the university's tenure committee:

Before President Napolitano used the power of her position to publicly condemn me, portray my conduct falsely, and make me a pariah at UC Berkeley, I would have had the chance to preserve my academic career. But her decision to shame me in the press and direct my ouster has destroyed my professional reputation. While the road forward for me as a faculty member at UC Berkeley is challenging, to say the least, the conduct of university officials in this grievance has made that road even rockier. President Napolitano's conduct in my case should serve as a  warning to all University of California faculty and staff whose careers and livelihoods are considered secondary to the leadership's need to direct public criticism and respond to public controversy. At the most basic level, I am an employee of the University of California, and the head of our university chose to pillory me publicly without first attempting to learn and understand the facts of what occurred, and then to fairly assess how the university's own processes had been followed and applied in my case, including the sanctions that the UC Berkeley administration had offered and I had accepted as part of a settlement. Had I known that my fate could turn on her reckless conduct, I could and would have pursued other options to preserve my future and protect my wife and children.

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Senate Holds Hearing Today On Navigating Business Tax Reform

The Senate Finance Committee holds a hearing today on Navigating Business Tax Reform:

• Thomas A. Barthold (Chief of Staff, Joint Committee on Taxation)
• James R. Hines, Jr. (Professor, University of Michigan)
• Sanford E. Zinman (Owner, Sanford E. Zinman, CPA, Tarrytown , NY)
• Gayle Goschie (Vice President, Goschie Farms, Silverton, OR)
• Eric Toder (Co-director, Tax Policy Center)

In connection with the hearing, the Joint Committee on Taxation has released Background On Business Tax Reform (JCX-35-16):

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