Law School Dean Developments

Law.com, 'Dean Developments': Several Deans Move Long Distance:

There may be a calm before the storm with only three dean changes within the past month, but June and July are prime time for dean moves.

The University of Buffalo School of Law has named a permanent dean [S. Todd Brown], as its former dean [Aviva Abramovsky] heads to Idaho. Meanwhile, an Albany Law School professor [Alicia Ouellette] is moving to the West Coast to take on a new role as dean.

Plus, the New York University School of Law has launched a new lab focusing on environmental justice, and Paul Caron celebrates 20 years of publishing the TaxProf Blog. ...

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Pepperdine Tax Policy Workshop Series (Spring 2024)

Thanks to Deanna Newton, the faculty who came to Malibu, and our students who made the Spring 2024 Pepperdine Tax Policy Workshop Series such a rousing success:

• January 22: Jason Oh (UCLA), How Does The Corporate Tax Distort Choice Of Corporate Governance? 
• February 5: Ariel Jurow Kleiman (Loyola-L.A.; Google Scholar), Taxing Nannies (with Shayak Sarkar (UC-Davis; Google Scholar) & Emily A. Satterthwaite (Georgetown; Google Scholar))
• February 19: Young Ran (Christine) Kim (Cardozo; Google Scholar), Taxing the Metaverse, 112 Geo. L.J. ___ (2024)
• March 11: Jordan Barry (USC; Google Scholar), Tax and the Boundaries of the Firm (with Victor Fleischer (UC-Irvine; Google Scholar)
• March 25: Goldburn Maynard, Jr. (Indiana-Kelley; Google Scholar), Penalizing Precarity, 123 Mich. L. Rev. __ (2024) (with Clinton Wallace (South Carolina; Google Scholar)) 
• April 8: Shayak Sarkar (UC-Davis; Google Scholar), Internal Revenue's External Borders, 112 Calif. L. Rev __ (2024)
• April 22: Michael Graetz (Columbia), The Power to Destroy: How the Antitax Movement Hijacked America (Princeton University Press 2024) 

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Deanna Newton Joins Pepperdine Tax Faculty

Deanna Newton, Caruso Family Faculty Fellow at Pepperdine Caruso Law School, will join the Pepperdine Caruso Law tenure-track faculty in August.

Deanna received her B.A. in political science from Loyola Marymount University in 2013; J.D. from Pepperdine Caruso Law School in 2017; and LL.M. in taxation from  Northwestern University Pritzker School of Law in 2018. She returned to Los Angeles and worked in KPMG's International Tax Group, where she advised multinational enterprises on tax planning matters, first as an Associate and then as a Senior Associate, from 2018-2022. Deanna taught Federal Income Tax as an adjunct professor at Pepperdine Caruso Law in Fall 2021 and Spring 2022.

In Fall 2022, Deanna was named the inaugural Caruso Family Faculty Fellow. The fellowship program is designed to help attorneys successfully transition from practice to tenure-track faculty positions.

Deanna taught Federal Income Tax in the 2022-2023 academic year and Federal Income Tax and Tax Policy in the 2023-2024 academic year. In 2023, she received the Waves of Excellence Teaching Award, the Waves of Excellence Service Award, and the Faculty Award at the Belonging Awards. Deanna primary research interests are international tax and tax policy. She has written two tax articles that have been accepted for publication in leading law reviews:

• Closing the Opportunity Gap, 102 N.C. L. Rev. ___ (2024) (presented at Boston College, Florida State, Pepperdine, Toronto,  and UC-San Francisco law schools)
• Inclusive Prosperity, 12 Tex. A&M L. Rev. ___ (2025) (presented at San Diego Law School)

Graetz Presents The Power to Destroy: How The Antitax Movement Hijacked America Today At Pepperdine

Michael J. Graetz (Columbia), presents The Power to Destroy: How the Antitax Movement Hijacked America (Princeton University Press 2024) (reviewed by Martin Sullivan here) at Pepperdine today as part of the Tax Policy Workshop Series hosted by Deanna Newton:

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

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

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20-Year Anniversary Of TaxProf Blog

Today (April 15, of course) marks the 20-year anniversary of TaxProf Blog (and the 29-year anniversary of the TaxProf Email Discussion Group). In 2004, I was in my fourteenth year on the University of Cincinnati College of Law faculty. I would be taking my son (age 13) to a ranch in Northern California (JH Ranch) that summer, and would return with my daughter (age 11) in summer 2005. 

It has been a wonderful ride, professionally, personally, and spiritually, these past twenty years. I have written over 52,000 posts (my first post is here), and TaxProf Blog has received over 200,000,000 page views.  The blog played a role in my selection as dean in 2017 —indeed, I may be the only dean in America with a contract provision encouraging me to continue to blog! I could not have done so without the wonderful work of my assistants the past seven years, especially the spectacular Kellie Kamimoto since June 2021.

I'm not sure how much longer I will keep TaxProf Blog going, but I am grateful for the many people who come for the tax, legal education, and faith content. (If you would like to receive a daily email with links to that day's tax or legal education posts, or a weekly email with links to Sunday's faith posts, please email me.) 

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Sarkar Presents Internal Revenue's External Borders Today At Pepperdine

Shayak Sarkar (UC-Davis; Google Scholar) presents Internal Revenue's External Borders, 112 Calif. L. Rev __ (2024), at Pepperdine today as part of its Tax Policy Workshop Series hosted by Deanna Newton:

The mandate of tax agencies seems clear: to secure revenue for the government and ensure taxpayer compliance. Yet for decades, the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) has regularly facilitated violent immigration enforcement. Scholars and the public have paid significant attention to the state and local policing of immigration law. But the role of tax bureaucrats as generals—no mere foot soldiers—has largely been overlooked.

This Article corrects that oversight. Building on emerging critiques of the tax system, I first describe tax-agency leadership in immigration raids, holding the dry mechanics of agency procedures against stark examples of IRS complicity in civil rights violations. I then raise several concerns about tax-agency involvement in immigration enforcement. After describing the tax-law origins of immigration raids’ constitutional exceptionalism, I assess residual constraints on tax-agency involvement: taxpayer privacy, regulatory suppression, and civil rights liability.

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Maynard Presents Penalizing Precarity Today At Pepperdine

Goldburn P. Maynard, Jr. (Indiana-Kelley; Google Scholar) presents Penalizing Precarity, 123 Mich. L. Rev __ (2024) (with Clinton Wallace (South Carolina; Google Scholar)) at Pepperdine today as part of its Tax Policy Workshop Series hosted by Deanna Newton:

Retirement policy in America is oriented around 401(k) accounts and other employer-sponsored savings plans, which will receive a whopping $1.5 trillion in tax subsidies over the next decade. This Article uncovers a harmful flaw in a common feature of these plans. The problem arises from a gap in the rules governing withdrawals made prior to reaching retirement age. Employees are generally required to seek approval from their plan administrator to receive a “hardship distribution,” which they are granted if they face an “immediate and heavy financial need,” like eviction or an unexpected medical expense. But even with this approval, these distributions are frequently subject to an “early withdrawal penalty,” a separate regime that is not coordinated with the hardship distribution rules.

This Article shows that the gap between the two sets of rules is little known to workers, employers and even policymakers. We document instances of taxpayers surviving financial calamity thanks to a hardship distribution only to learn that they now face a tax penalty—resulting in another cash crunch. 

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Barry Presents Tax And The Boundaries Of The Firm Today At Pepperdine

Jordan Barry (USC; Google Scholar) presents Tax and the Boundaries of the Firm (with Victor Fleischer (UC-Irvine; Google Scholar); reviewed by Tracey Roberts (Cumberland; Google Scholar) here) at Pepperdine today as part of its Tax Policy Workshop Series hosted by Deanna Newton:

One of the most fundamental questions of economics is how firms decide what to produce themselves (“make”) and what to purchase from other firms (“buy”). We analyze how income taxes distort firms’ decisions along this and related dimensions. Three main effects emerge.

First, intrafirm transactions allow firms to reduce their tax burdens, such as by shifting their income to lower-tax jurisdictions. This effect is inherent to an income tax. It makes firms bigger, encouraging them to “make” more and “buy” less. Second, implementing an income tax entails enacting many additional rules, none of which is inherent to an income tax. Many of these rules affect the boundary of the firm. Some expand it; others contract it. However, these expansions and contractions generally operate along different dimensions, and thus do not offset each other. Finally, income taxes encourage regulatory arbitrage transactions, which enable firms to achieve their desired tax treatment without changing the economic boundary of the firm. These transactions preserve the boundary of the firm, but also create complexity, opacity, and inefficiency.

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Kim Presents Taxing The Metaverse Today At Pepperdine

Young Ran (Christine) Kim (Cardozo; Google Scholar) presents Taxing the Metaverse, 112 Geo. L.J. ___ (2024), at Pepperdine today as part of its Tax Policy Workshop Series hosted by Deanna Newton:

The buzz surrounding the Metaverse has been growing steadily for the past couple of years, but the tax implications of this novel ecosystem remain fuzzy to most tax scholars. Such uncertainty is concerning, given the potential and momentum of this emerging technology. Although the Metaverse evolved from online video games focused only on user consumption, it now allows users to produce income and accumulate wealth entirely within the Metaverse. Current law seems to defer taxation of such until a realization or cash-out event. This paper challenges this approach.

This paper offers novel arguments justifying Metaverse taxation. Because economic activity within the Metaverse satisfies the Haig-Simons and Glenshaw Glass definitions of income, its exclusion will create a tax haven. Tax policy can also play an essential role in regulating the virtual economy. Furthermore, this emerging technology allows policymakers to modernize the tax system. 

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Jurow Kleiman Presents Taxing Nannies Today At Pepperdine

Ariel Jurow Kleiman (Loyola-L.A.; Google Scholar) presents Taxing Nannies (with Shayak Sarkar (UC-Davis; Google Scholar) & Emily A. Satterthwaite (Georgetown; Google Scholar)) at Pepperdine today as part of its Tax Policy Workshop Series hosted by Deanna Newton:

Nannies in the U.S. work long hours for low wages and risk retaliation if they complain. Informal, or “off the books,” work exacerbates their precarity, keeping it secret from state and federal tax agencies, as well as employment and labor agencies. Yet we have little understanding of how nannies navigate the tax reporting that renders them formal or informal.

This Article investigates nannies’ preferences for or against formal employment and tax reporting, the reasons behind such preferences, and how such preferences inform nannies’ relationships with their employers and legal institutions more broadly. The Article employs a multi-method research approach that includes an original and innovative survey of nannies and an analysis of nannies’ tax-related posts on the online forum Reddit. To supplement this research, the Article also discusses interviews with fifteen subject-matter experts regarding industry norms, common challenges nannies face, and policy reforms.

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Oh Presents How Does The Corporate Tax Distort Choice Of Corporate Governance? Today At Pepperdine

Jason Oh (UCLA) presents How Does the Corporate Tax Distort Choice of Corporate Governance? at Pepperdine today as part of its Tax Policy Workshop Series hosted by Deanna Newton:

To what extent does the tax system distort the organizational governance of business entities? For non-publicly traded entities, the connection between tax treatment and governance is weak. Decisions regarding tax and governance can be made independently because of flexible modern LLC statutes and the check-the-box regime. If a business wants corporate governance but partnership tax, it can form as an LLC and adopt corporate-like governance. If a business wants non-corporate governance but corporate tax, it can choose its governance structure and check-the-box to be treated as a corporation.

However, for publicly-traded entities, the choice of tax and governance remains linked. The tax rules require that publicly-traded entities generally be taxed as corporations. There are narrow exceptions for master-limited partnerships and certain investment companies like RICs and REITs. This Article explores important governance and tax puzzles related to publicly-traded entities.

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Pepperdine Hosts Junior Tax Scholars Writing Retreat

Pepperdine Caruso Law was delighted to host a group of junior tax professors last week for a winter writing retreat:  Luis Calderon-Gomez (Cardozo), Conor Clarke (Washington University), Maynard Goldburn (Indiana-Kelley Business School), Nyamagaga Gondwe (Wisconsin), Luke Maher (Seattle), Jeesoo Nam (USC), Deanna Newton (Pepperdine), and Alex Zhang (Emory). The only bummer: I was at the AALS Annual Meeting all week and didn't have the opportunity to spend any time with these wonderful young tax scholars. Hopefully next year!

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Please Join Us: Pepperdine Caruso Law AALS Reception TODAY (6:00-8:00 PM)

Pepperdine Caruso Law School invites law professors and deans to a reception
hosted by Dean Paul Caron at the 2024 AALS Annual Meeting in Washington, D.C.

Friday, Jan. 5, 6:00 - 8:00 p.m.
Tulip Room (2nd Floor Mezzanine) | Marriott Marquis (Headquarter Hotel)
Please join us for local California wine & beer and hors d'oeuvres

Please Join Us: Pepperdine Caruso Law AALS Reception (Friday, Jan. 5)

Pepperdine Caruso Law School invites law professors and deans to a reception
hosted by Dean Paul Caron at the 2024 AALS Annual Meeting in Washington, D.C.

Friday, Jan. 5, 6:00 - 8:00 p.m.
Tulip Room (2nd Floor Mezzanine) | Marriott Marquis (Headquarters Hotel)
Please join us for local California wine & beer and hors d'oeuvres

Newton Presents Closing the Opportunity Gap Today At Pepperdine

Deanna Newton (Pepperdine) presents Closing the Opportunity Gap at Pepperdine today as part of its Faculty Workshop Series hosted by Jacob Charles: 

Opportunity Zones are low-income areas or economically distressed communities in the United States. The Opportunity Zone program encourages investment in low-income areas or economically distressed communities by offering investors tax benefits. Scholars have found little evidence that Opportunity Zones positively impact zone residents’ lives, concluding that Opportunity Zone legislation mostly benefits wealthy investors and should be reformed to benefit community members better. Investors are currently not required to finance projects geared toward the needs of local communities; they are instead funding developments they would have already invested in, whether located in an Opportunity Zone or not. This Article argues that current reform efforts and related scholarship do not give adequate weight to active and direct participation by community members and investors as it relates to economic development tax incentives. It argues for a comprehensive framework that focuses on active, direct, and transformative participation by community members and investors.

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Newton Presents Closing The Opportunity Gap Today At UC-San Francisco

Deanna Newton (Pepperdine) presents Closing the Opportunity Gap at UC-San Francisco today as part of its Tax Speaker Series hosted by Heather Field:

Opportunity Zones are low-income areas or economically distressed communities in the United States. The Opportunity Zone program encourages investment in low-income areas or economically distressed communities by offering investors tax benefits. Scholars have found little evidence that Opportunity Zones positively impact zone residents’ lives, concluding that Opportunity Zone legislation mostly benefits wealthy investors and should be reformed to benefit community members better. Investors are currently not required to finance projects geared toward the needs of local communities; they are instead funding developments they would have already invested in, whether located in an Opportunity Zone or not. This Article argues that current reform efforts and related scholarship do not give adequate weight to active and direct participation by community members and investors as it relates to economic development tax incentives. It argues for a comprehensive framework that focuses on active, direct, and transformative participation by community members and investors.

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Newton Presents Closing the Opportunity Gap Today At Boston College

Deanna Newton (Pepperdine) presents Closing the Opportunity Gap at Boston College today as part of its Tax Policy Collaborative hosted by James Repetti:

Researchers have found little to no evidence that Opportunity Zones positively impact zone residents’ lives. Scholars agree that the majority of benefits from Opportunity Zone legislation go to wealthy investors and should be reformed to better benefit community members. This Article argues that current reform efforts and related scholarship do not give adequate weight to active and direct participation by community members and investors. This Article proposes two novel policy reforms for the Opportunity Zone program, which fills a growing gap in Opportunity Zone literature. First, investors should be required to buy into the community financially or personally. Buy-in would entail a one-time lump sum payment to a community fund or a community service pledge to ensure actualized commitment to community development. Second, a percentage of each Opportunity Zone should be reserved for current community members to invest in. Investors are currently not required to finance projects geared toward the needs of local communities, and are instead funding developments they would have already invested in, whether located in an Opportunity Zone or not.

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Newton Presents Closing the Opportunity Gap Today At Toronto

Deanna Newton (Pepperdine) presents Closing the Opportunity Gap at Toronto today as part of its James Hausman Tax Law and Policy Workshop Series hosted by Benjamin Alarie:

Researchers have found little to no evidence that Opportunity Zones positively impact zone residents’ lives. Scholars agree that the majority of benefits from Opportunity Zone legislation go to wealthy investors and should be reformed to better benefit community members. This Article argues that current reform efforts and related scholarship do not give adequate weight to active and direct participation by community members and investors. This Article proposes two novel policy reforms for the Opportunity Zone program, which fills a growing gap in Opportunity Zone literature. First, investors should be required to buy into the community financially or personally. Buy-in would entail a one-time lump sum payment to a community fund or a community service pledge to ensure actualized commitment to community development. Second, a percentage of each Opportunity Zone should be reserved for current community members to invest in. Investors are currently not required to finance projects geared toward the needs of local communities, and are instead funding developments they would have already invested in, whether located in an Opportunity Zone or not.

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Newton Presents Closing the Opportunity Gap Today At Florida State

Deanna Newton (Pepperdine) presents Closing the Opportunity Gap at Florida State today as part of its Law and Business Speaker Series hosted by Jeffrey Kahn:

Researchers have found little to no evidence that Opportunity Zones positively impact zone residents’ lives. Scholars agree that the majority of benefits from Opportunity Zone legislation go to wealthy investors and should be reformed to better benefit community members. This Article argues that current reform efforts and related scholarship do not give adequate weight to active and direct participation by community members and investors. This Article proposes two novel policy reforms for the Opportunity Zone program, which fills a growing gap in Opportunity Zone literature. First, investors should be required to buy into the community financially or personally. Buy-in would entail a one-time lump sum payment to a community fund or a community service pledge to ensure actualized commitment to community development. Second, a percentage of each Opportunity Zone should be reserved for current community members to invest in. Investors are currently not required to finance projects geared toward the needs of local communities, and are instead funding developments they would have already invested in, whether located in an Opportunity Zone or not.

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Please Join Us: Pepperdine Caruso Law AALS Reception (Friday, Jan. 6)

Pepperdine Caruso Law School invites law professors and deans to a reception
hosted by Dean Paul Caron at the 2023 AALS Annual Meeting in San Diego

Friday, Jan. 6, 6:30 - 8:30 p.m.
Malibu Room | Marriott Marquis San Diego Marina (Headquarter Hotel)
Please join us for local California wine & beer and hors d'oeuvres

ABA Teaching Taxation Panel Today On Riding The Tax Reform Wave In Real Time

I am looking forward to moderating the Teaching Taxation Section panel on Riding the Tax Reform Wave in Real Time at today's ABA Tax Section Virtual 2022 Mid-Year Meeting at 12:30-2:00 PM ET:

What are the different ways in which law faculty and practitioners keep up with tax reform proposals, legislative changes, and administrative guidance in the rapidly changing world of tax law? As professionals, we need to be aware of conversations around legislative proposals and any resulting changes that would impact our audience, whether that is law students or clients. What are the best processes and sources of information for staying abreast of pending changes to the tax law? How do we juggle uncertainty as proposals unfold, whether we are teaching students or advising clients? How do we get up to speed as quickly as possible once changes are implemented and guidance follows? The panel – consisting of a tax law professor, law librarian, journalist, and practitioner – will discuss the best practices with simulations.

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Pepperdine Symposium: Wealth And Inequality

Symposium, Wealth and Inequality, 48 Pepp. L. Rev. 875-1129 (2021):

• Ari Glogower (Ohio State), Comparing Capital Income and Wealth Taxes, 48 Pepp. L. Rev. 875 (2021)
• Richard Winchester (Seton Hall), A GILTI Fix for an Employment Tax Glitch, 48 Pepp. L. Rev. 915 (2021)
• Bobby L. Dexter (Chapman), Inequality, and the Berlin Walls of the Mind, 48 Pepp. L. Rev. 949 (2021)
• Karen B. Brown (George Washington), Tax Incentives and Sub-Saharan Africa, 48 Pepp. L. Rev. 995 (2021)
• Phyllis Taite (Oklahoma City), May the Odds Be Ever in Your Favor: How the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act Fortified the Great Wealth Divide, 48 Pepp. L. Rev. 1023 (2021)

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Pepperdine Seeks To Hire An Entry-Level Tax Prof

Pepperdine University Rick J. Caruso School of Law:

Pepperdine University Caruso School of Law is seeking several entry-level, tenure-track faculty to join our vibrant community. We invite candidates with research and teaching interests across all areas of law to apply, and have particular teaching needs in Torts, Tax, Criminal Law, Ethical Lawyering and Intellectual Property Law.

The School of Law is an ABA-accredited, AALS member law school located in Malibu, California. Pepperdine is a Christian university committed to the highest standards of academic excellence and Christian values, where students are strengthened for lives of purpose, service, and leadership. The School of Law welcomes applications from people of all faiths and is particularly interested in receiving applications from candidates who would contribute to the diversity and excellence of the faculty. Pepperdine University is an equal opportunity employer and does not unlawfully discriminate on the basis of race, color, national or ethnic origin, religion, age, gender, disability, prior military service or sexual orientation.

For further information, please contact Professor Victoria Schwartz, Chair, Faculty Appointments Committee.

Law schools looking to hire Tax Profs to start in the 2022-23 academic year:

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Pepperdine Caruso Law Seeks To Hire Tax, Criminal Law, Evidence And Torts Profs

Pepperdine University Caruso School of Law is seeking to fill two entry-level, tenure-track positions on our faculty. We welcome candidates across all areas of law to apply, with some areas of particular interest including Criminal Law, Evidence, Tax, and Torts.

The School of Law is an ABA-accredited, AALS member law school located in Malibu, California. Pepperdine is a Christian university committed to the highest standards of academic excellence and Christian values, where students are strengthened for lives of purpose, service, and leadership. The School of Law welcomes applications from people of all faiths and is particularly interested in receiving applications from candidates who may bring greater racial, ethnic, and gender diversity to the faculty. Pepperdine University is an equal opportunity employer.

For further information, please contact Professor David Han, Chair, Faculty Appointments Committee.

Law schools looking to hire tenure-track/tenured Tax Profs to start in the 2021-22 academic year:

• Campbell
• Colorado
• Dayton
• Drake
• Howard
• Idaho
• Loyola-L.A.
• Michigan State
• Northern Illinois
• Pace
• Pepperdine
• Rutgers
• St. Thomas
• Vanderbilt
• Wake Forest
• Wayne State

2021 U.S. News Tax Rankings

The new 2021 U.S. News Tax Rankings include the tax programs at 187 law schools (the faculty survey had a 59% response rate). Here are the Top 50:

Rank	Score	School
1	4.8	NYU
2	4.4	Georgetown
3	4.3	Northwestern
3	4.3	Florida
5	4.1	UCLA
5	4.1	Virginia
7	4.0	Harvard
7	4.0	Stanford
7	4.0	Chicago
10	3.9	Columbia
11	3.8	Loyola-L.A.
11	3.8	UC-Irvine
11	3.8	Michigan
11	3.8	Yale
15	3.7	Penn
15	3.7	USC
15	3.7	Texas
18	3.6	Boston College
18	3.6	Duke
20	3.5	Indiana (Maurer)
21	3.4	Boston University
21	3.4	San Diego
23	3.3	UC-Hastings
23	3.3	UC-Berkeley
23	3.3	Washington Univ.
26	3.2	UC-Davis
26	3.2	Houston
26	3.2	Miami
26	3.2	Minnesota
26	3.2	North Carolina
26	3.2	Pittsburgh
32	3.1	BYU
32	3.1	Fordham
32	3.1	Ohio State
32	3.1	Alabama
32	3.1	Washington & Lee
37	3.0	Arizona State
37	3.0	Florida State
37	3.0	Pepperdine
37	3.0	Temple
37	3.0	Villanova
42	2.9	Cornell
42	2.9	George Washington
42	2.9	Washington
45	2.8	Georgia
45	2.8	Illinois
45	2.8	Notre Dame
48	2.7	Brooklyn
48	2.7	Emory
48	2.7	Loyola-Chicago
48	2.7	SMU
48	2.7	UNLV
48	2.7	Vanderbilt
48	2.7	Cardozo

Among the law schools in the tax rankings last year, here are the biggest upward moves:

• +14: Ohio State (#32), Washington University (#23)
• +11: Houston (#26)
• +9: Yale (#11)
• +6: Arizona State (#37), UC-Davis (#26)

Here are the biggest downward moves:

• -17: Washington (#42)
• -12: Temple (#37), Villanova (#37)
• -10: George Washington (#42)
• -8: Georgia (#45)
• -7: Boston University (#21)

Derek Muller (Pepperdine) notes the absurd volatility of USNWR specialty law rankings by pointing out changes in the peer reputation scores of tax programs at these law schools:

South Carolina: 2.6 (+0.6)
Loyola Chicago: 2.7 (+0.4)
Albany: 1.8 (+0.4)
Cornell: 2.9 (+0.4)
Ohio State: 3.1 (+0.4)
Baltimore: 2.3 (+0.4)
Cincinnati: 2.4 (+0.4)
Richmond: 2.6 (+0.4)
Washington University: 3.3 (+0.4)
-
Suffolk: 1.5 (-0.4)
Wyoming: 1.5 (-0.4)
Vermont: 1.3 (-0.4)
New England Law: 1.2 (-0.4)
Montana: 2.0 (-0.5)

Here are the rankings of law schools with graduate tax programs:

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More On The 50 Most-Cited Tax Articles of All Time

Following up on my previous post on Jonathan H. Choi (NYU), The 50 Most-Cited Tax Articles of All Time, 36 Yale J. on Reg.: Notice & Comment (May 11, 2019):

47 authors (40 men, 7 women) wrote the 50 most-cited tax articles, 8 (7 men, 1 woman) more than once:

Author	Frequency
Boris Bittker	4
David Weisbach	4
Joseph Bankman	3
Stanley Surrey	3
Reuven Avi-Yonah	2
Michael Graetz	2
Marjorie Kornhauser	2
Edward Zelinsky	2
Bruce Ackerman	1
Anne Alstott	1
William Andrews	1
Lily Batchelder	1
Walter Blum	1
Paul Caron	1
Marvin Chirelstein	1
Dan Coenen	1
Richard Doernberg	1
Peter Enrich	1
Victor Fleischer	1
Pamela Gann	1
Mark Gergen	1
Fred Goldberg	1
Thomas Griffith	1
Erwin Griswold	1
Daniel Halperin	1
David Hariton	1
Walter Hellerstein	1
Kristin Hickman	1
Harry Kalven	1
Louis Kaplow	1
Mark Kelman	1
Leandra Lederman	1
Fred McChesney	1
Beverly Moran	1
R.A. Musgrave	1
Jacob Nussim	1
Michael O’Hear	1
Peter Orszag	1
Randolph Paul	1
William Plumb	1
Eric Posner	1
David Schizer	1
Steven Shavell	1
Dan Shaviro	1
David Slawson	1
Joseph Sneed	1
William Whitford	1

The authors are from 22 law schools, 12 law schools are represented more than once:

School	Frequency
Harvard	9
Chicago	7
Yale	6
Stanford	5
Columbia	4
Cardozo	2
Emory	2
Georgia	2
Michigan	2
NYU	2
Tulane	2
USC	2
Duke	1
Indiana	1
Marquette	1
Minnesota	1
Northeastern	1
Pepperdine	1
UC-Berkeley	1
UC-Irvine	1
Vanderbilt	1
Wisconsin	1

The 50 most-cited tax articles were published in 21 law reviews (12 law reviews published 2 or more of the articles):

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The Blog Must Go On For This Law Dean

Law.com, The Blog Must Go On for This Law Dean:

Pepperdine University Law Dean Paul Caron reflects on his two years of running a law school while also publishing his widely read TaxProf Blog, which chronicles legal education's biggest stories.

Paul Caron—legal education’s so-called Blog Emperor—took the reins at Pepperdine University School of Law in 2017, and his two years as dean have been a remarkable ride.

Things got off to a rough start in the spring of 2018 when the school was removed from the U.S. News & World Report rankings after Pepperdine discovered a mistake in the data it submitted that artificially increased its ranking and reported it to the publication. (Pepperdine returned to the ranking this year, moving up from its previous No. 72 to No. 51).

The challenges didn’t end there. In November, a Pepperdine law student was present at a nearby music venue when an armed man opened fire, killing 12. The law student was unharmed but the massacre, in which a Pepperdine undergraduate died, shook the Malibu, California, campus. A day later, the so-called Woolsey Fire tore through the area and came close to leveling the campus. The law school was spared, but closed for more than two weeks in the aftermath.

Through it all, Caron maintained his role as the town crier of legal education with his TaxProf Blog, which aggregates news about tax law and law schools. The 15-year-old blog is a must-read for legal educators and has become an important tool to raise Pepperdine’s profile and stature in the academy. Caron posts stories about events and initiatives at Pepperdine, not to mention plenty of photos of its seaside campus. Law.com caught up with Caron this week to discuss juggling the blog with his dean duties and why he hasn’t given TaxProf Blog up. His answers have been edited for length and clarity.

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Dorothy Brown: Goodbye, But Not Farewell

Dorothy Brown headed back to Emory yesterday after completing her stint at Pepperdine as our Straus Distinguished Visiting Professor. She left behind one old friend and countless new ones. She regaled our students in Federal Income Tax and Tax Policy, which she co-taught (cough) with a frazzled dean. I will have three lasting memories of Dorothy's time here: (1) the great tax workshop series we put together, with seven outstanding speakers and wonderful post-presentation lunches; (2) the wonderful Critical Tax Conference we co-hosted, particularly Dorothy's fiery keynote address, The Life of a Tax Crit: When Keeping It Real Can Go Really Really Wrong; and (3) most importantly, the relationships Dorothy developed in her four months here, particularly with the students and staff (perhaps never before has a Straus Distinguished Visiting Professor (certainly not me) taken several staff people out for meals and given them gifts on her departure). We hope Dorothy will be back in Malibu in the future, initially as part of our Spring 2020 tax workshop series.

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Morse Presents GILTI: The Cooperative Potential Of A Unilateral Minimum Tax Today At Pepperdine

Susan C. Morse (Texas) presents GILTI: The Cooperative Potential of a Unilateral Minimum Tax at Pepperdine today as part of our Tax Policy Workshop Series hosted by Dorothy Brown and Paul Caron and funded in part by a generous gift from Scott Racine:

Could the U.S. tax on global intangible low-taxed income, or GILTI, end the game of international tax competition? The GILTI tax is a unilateral minimum tax enacted as part as 2017 tax statute known as the TCJA. There is a long-shot possibility that it might save the global corporate tax. A robust global corporate tax in turn could support innovative new policy options such as the use of corporate tax revenue to further international social justice goals. The stakes are high. Is there any chance that GILTI could do it? ...

This paper proceeds as follows. Part I compares the GILTI tax to the U.S. deferral regime that preceded it, and describes the cooperative potential of the U.S. international corporate tax law after the 2017 Act. Part II explains the details of GILTI structure, which works as advertised if international tax systems conform with respect to timing, rate and base. Part III explains that taxpayers will attempt to disrupt the convergence of timing, rate and base. Tax administrators, in turn, will face the question of whether, and how, to pursue the possibility of harmonizing corporate tax systems in light of the tools offered by the U.S. international corporate tax law after the 2017 Act.

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Kysar Presents Unravelling The Tax Treaty Today At Pepperdine

Rebecca Kysar (Fordham) presents Unravelling the Tax Treaty, 103 Minn. L. Rev. ___ (2019), at Pepperdine today as part of our Tax Policy Workshop Series hosted by Dorothy Brown and Paul Caron and funded in part by a generous gift from Scott Racine:

Coordination among nations over the taxation of international transactions rests on a network of some 2,000 bilateral double tax treaties. The double tax treaty is, in many ways, the roots of the international system of taxation. That system, however, is in upheaval in the face of globalization, technological advances, taxpayer abuse, and shifting political tides. In the academic literature, however, scrutiny of tax treaties is largely confined to the albeit important question of whether tax treaties are beneficial for developing countries. Surprisingly little consideration has been paid to whether developed countries, like the United States, should continue to sign tax treaties with one another, and no formal revenue or economic analyses of the treaties has been undertaken by the United States government. In fact, little evidence or theory exists to support entrance into tax treaties by the United States, and examination of investment flows indicates the treaties may even lose U.S. revenues. Problematically, the treaties also thwart reforms of the antiquated and broken international tax system. The trajectory of the recent U.S. tax legislation illustrates this phenomenon.

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22nd Annual Critical Tax Theory Conference At Pepperdine

Pepperdine hosts the 22nd Annual Critical Tax Theory Conference (program) today and tomorrow:

The Critical Tax Theory Conference has a long history of fostering the work of both established and emerging scholars whose research challenges and enriches the tax law and policy literature. Critical tax scholars question assumptions of objectivity in tax, as their work explores how tax law and policy impact historically marginalized groups. At a time when tax policy is once again at the forefront of politics and public discourse, the work of these and other critical tax scholars supports a more robust discussion of the role for tax law in current and future social and economic policy.

Keynote Address:  Dorothy Brown (Emory; Visiting at Pepperdine), The Life of a Tax Crit: When Keeping It Real Can Go Really Really Wrong

Panel #1: 

• Ellen Aprill (Loyola-L.A.) (moderator)
• Leslie Book (Villanova), Giving Taxpayer Rights a Seat at the Table
• Orli Oren-Kolbinger (Villanova), The Effect of Judges’ Personal and Professional Backgrounds on their Decisions in Equitable 'Innocent Spouse Relief’ Cases
• Christine Kim (Utah), Insulation by Separation: When Dual-Class Stock Met Corporate Spin-offs

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Blank Presents Simplexity And Legal Calculators Today At Pepperdine

Joshua Blank (UC-Irvine) presents Simplexity and Legal Calculators (with Leigh Osofsky (North Carolina)) at Pepperdine today as part of our Tax Policy Workshop Series hosted by Dorothy Brown and Paul Caron and funded in part by a generous gift from Scott Racine:

Automated customer service has become one of the primary ways in which consumers find answers to their questions, whether they involve airline reservations, medical insurance coverage or unresponsive home appliances. Federal and state tax authorities have increasingly begun to offer online decision-making tools that provide guidance regarding the tax law to taxpayers. Some online tools, such as the IRS’s “Withholding Calculator,” direct taxpayers to input wage information in order to receive confirmation of whether their tax withholding is adequate. More comprehensive online tools, such as the IRS’s “Interactive Tax Assistant,” ask taxpayers personal questions and then deliver answers on topics ranging from whether the taxpayer is required to file a tax return to whether the taxpayer is entitled to claim certain tax credits to whether a type of income is taxable. These online tools do not just perform mathematical calculations; rather, they attempt to calculate taxpayers’ legal consequences.

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2020 U.S. News Tax Rankings

Update: 2021 U.S. News Tax Rankings

As I blogged last fall, U.S. News has dramatically changed their ranking of nine law school specialty programs:

Law school specialty rankings ... are based solely on peer assessments by law school faculty who teach in that specialty area. The peer assessment surveys for the specialty law school area rankings were conducted in fall 2018 and early 2019 by U.S. News.

This year for the first time, law school faculty members who teach in each specialty area rated the other law schools in that specialty area on a 5-point scale. Those schools with the highest average scores among those raters who rated them appear in the rankings and are ranked in descending order based on their average peer score they received in that specialty area. In all the previous law school specialty rankings, the law school raters chose their top 15 in a specialty area. This new methodology produced a significantly larger number of schools that were ranked in each specialty area – in some cases five or six times more. ... [A]ll programs that received 10 or more ratings are numerically ranked in that specialty. Schools with less than 10 ratings in a specialty aren't listed. [The response rate of the tax faculty survey was 50%.].

The new 2020 U.S. News Tax Rankings include the tax programs at 175 law schools. Here are the Top 50:

Rank	Score	School
1	4.9	NYU
2	4.5	Georgetown
3	4.4	Florida
4	4.2	Northwestern
5	4.1	Virginia
6	4.0	Columbia
6	4.0	Stanford
8	3.9	Harvard
8	3.9	UC-Irvine
8	3.9	UCLA
11	3.8	Chicago
11	3.8	Michigan
11	3.8	Pennsylvania
14	3.7	Boston College
14	3.7	Boston University
14	3.7	Duke
14	3.7	Loyola-L.A.
14	3.7	USC
14	3.7	Texas
20	3.6	Indiana (Maurer)
20	3.6	Yale
22	3.5	San Diego
23	3.4	UC-Berkeley
24	3.2	Miami
25	3.1	Temple
25	3.1	UC-Hastings
25	3.1	Minnesota
25	3.1	North Carolina
25	3.1	Pittsburgh
25	3.1	Univ. of Washington
25	3.1	Villanova
32	3.0	Florida State
32	3.0	Fordham
32	3.0	George Washington
32	3.0	Pepperdine
32	3.0	UC-Davis
37	2.9	BYU
37	2.9	Alabama
37	2.9	Georgia
37	2.9	Houston
37	2.9	Washington & Lee
37	2.9	Washington Univ.
43	2.8	Arizona State
43	2.8	Georgia State
43	2.8	Notre Dame
46	2.7	Brooklyn
46	2.7	Emory
46	2.7	Ohio State
46	2.7	Tulane
46	2.7	Illinois
46	2.7	Iowa
46	2.7	William & Mary

Among the law schools in the tax rankings last year, ranked last year Here are the biggest upward moves:

• +13:  Stanford (#6)
• +8:  Chicago (#11), Penn (#11)
• +6:  Columbia (#6)
• +5:  Duke (#14)

Here are the biggest downward moves:

• -30:  Denver (55)
• -8:  Univ. of Washington (#25)
• -7:  Boston University (#14)
• -6:  Loyola-L.A. (#14), San Diego (#22)
• -5:  Yale (#20)

Here are the rankings of law schools with graduate tax programs:

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Shobe Presents Economic Segregation, Tax Reform, And The Local Tax Deduction Today At Pepperdine

Gladriel Shobe (BYU) presents Economic Segregation, Tax Reform, and the Local Tax Deduction at Pepperdine today as part of our Tax Policy Workshop Series hosted by Dorothy Brown and Paul Caron and funded in part by a generous gift from Scott Racine:

Economic segregation has increased over the past half century. The trend of rich localities getting richer while poor localities get poorer is particularly concerning because it limits upward mobility and perpetuates intergenerational income inequality. This Article makes the novel argument that the federal deduction for local taxes rewards, and likely contributes to, economic segregation. It arrives at that conclusion by showing that the local tax deduction disproportionately subsidizes wealthy localities because only those localities have a critical mass of wealthy taxpayers who claim the deduction. This allows wealthy localities, but not poor localities, to provide services at a cost less than face value to their residents. This Article argues that the deduction’s subsidy for wealthy localities rewards and likely contributes to economic segregation because it provides an incentive for the wealthy to segregate into wealthy, subsidized localities over less segregated and less subsidized localities.

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Maynard Presents Legislating Tax Cuts With Tall Tales Today At Pepperdine

Goldburn P. Maynard Jr. (Louisville) presents Legislating Tax Cuts With Tall Tales at Pepperdine today as part of our Tax Policy Workshop Series hosted by Dorothy Brown and Paul Caron and funded in part by a generous gift from Scott Racine:

Part I provides a brief introduction to the work of philosophers Liam Murphy and Thomas Nagel on everyday libertarianism. This part shows how the narratives of hard work and just desert along with stories of government oppression have been used to support policies that harm those who vote against them. System Justification Theory helps to explain the counterintuitive notion that the disadvantaged have a need to defend the status quo.

Part II proceeds by exploring three tax reform battles from different decades: 1986, 2001, 2017. By comparing the three, this part shows that there was a narrative element to each. Yet, the importance of data decreased across each tax fight. In 1986 there was a genuine commitment to thorough data collection. By 2017, reformers were dodging the data and questioning its effectiveness.

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Oh Presents The Effects Of Capital Gains Rate Uncertainty On Realization Today At Pepperdine

Jason Oh (UCLA) presents The Effects of Capital Gains Rate Uncertainty on Realization (with David Kamin (NYU)) at Pepperdine today as part of our Tax Policy Workshop Series hosted by Dorothy Brown and Paul Caron and funded in part by a generous gift from Scott Racine:

Taxpayers should expect capital gains rates to fluctuate in light of frequent historical changes and the current divergence of rates preferred by Democrats and Republicans. This paper is the first to model the effect of such rate uncertainty on the realization incentives of asset holders and finds those effects to be potentially large. There are several implications. First, rate uncertainty may alleviate the lock-in effect of the realization rule when rates are low and exacerbate lock-in when rates are high. Second, there could be significant inaccuracies extrapolating the elasticity of capital gains realizations measured at one rate to another. Third, some policy solutions aimed at addressing distortions created by the realization rule may not work as well as expected.

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Kleiman Presents Tax Limits And Public Control Today At Pepperdine

Ariel Jurow Kleiman (San Diego) presents Tax Limits and the Future of Local Democracy, 133 Harv. L. Rev. ___ 2019), at Pepperdine today as part of our Tax Policy Workshop Series hosted by Dorothy Brown and Paul Caron:

Local governments are severely restricted in their ability to raise tax revenue, in part by state-level statutes that place caps on local tax rates and revenue. Many attribute the proliferation of these local tax limitations to entrenched antitax sentiment among U.S. taxpayers. This antitax narrative is attractive for its simplicity and explanatory power. It provides a clear mandate for those enacting tax limiting laws as well as a simple fiscal rubric for those evaluating the success of such limits—namely, lower taxes equals success. However, the explanatory power of the antitax narrative is limited. Perhaps most notably, it fails to explain why voters regularly approve tax increases, even in places with strict tax limitations. Using the lens of the 1970s Tax Revolt, this Article complicates the traditional antitax narrative surrounding tax limitations, offering evidence that voters also supported tax limits in order to increase public control and oversight of local government fiscal decisions.

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Pepperdine Tax Policy Workshop Series (Spring 2019)

Here is the schedule for the Spring 2019 Pepperdine Tax Policy Workshop Series I am co-hosting with Dorothy Brown, our Straus Distinguished Visiting Professor of Law, funded in part with a generous gift from Scott Racine:

• January 23:  Ariel Jurow Kleiman (San Diego), Tax Limits and the Future of Local Democracy, 133 Harv. L. Rev. ___ (2019)
• February 4:  Jason Oh (UCLA), The Effects of Capital Gains Rate Uncertainty on Realization (with David Kamin (NYU))
• February 18:  Goldburn Maynard (Louisville), Legislating Tax Cuts With Tall Tales
• March 4:  Gladriel Shobe (BYU), Economic Segregation, Tax Reform, and the Local Tax Deduction
• March 25:  Joshua Blank (UC-Irvine), Simplexity and Legal Calculators (with Leigh Osofsky (North Carolina)) 
• April 8:  Rebecca Kysar (Fordham), Unravelling The Tax Treaty, 103 Minn. L. Rev. ___ (2019)
• April 22:  Susan Morse (Texas), GILTI: The Cooperative Potential of a Unilateral Minimum Tax

I will of course blog each professor's paper on the day of their presentation. Southern California professors and practitioners are welcome to attend any of the sessions (10:30 a.m. - 12:00 p.m.), as well as lunch with our speaker and students (12:00 pm - 1:15 pm) — just let me know.

• Pepperdine Tax Policy Workshop Series (Spring 2014)
• Pepperdine Tax Policy Workshop Series (Spring 2015)
• Pepperdine Tax Policy Workshop Series (Spring 2016)
• Pepperdine Tax Policy Workshop Series (Spring 2017)

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Barry Presents Collusion In Markets With Syndication Today At Pepperdine

Jordan Barry presents Collusion in Markets With Syndication (with John Hatfield (Texas), Scott Kominers (Harvard) & Richard Lowery (Texas)) at Pepperdine today as part of our Faculty Workshop Series hosted by Babette Boliek:

Many markets, including the markets for IPOs and debt issuances, are syndicated, in that a bidder who wins a contract will often invite competitors to join a syndicate that will fulfill the contract. We model syndicated markets as a repeated extensive form game, and show that standard intuitions from industrial organization can be reversed: Collusion may become easier as market concentration falls, and market entry may in fact facilitate collusion. In particular, price collusion can be sustained by a strategy in which firms refuse to join the syndicate of any firm that deviates from the collusive price, thereby raising total production costs. Our results can thus rationalize the apparently contradictory empirical facts that the market for IPO underwriting exhibits seemingly collusive pricing despite its low level of market concentration.

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Pepperdine Tax Policy Workshop Series (Spring 2017)

Thanks to the faculty and students who made our Spring 2017 Pepperdine Tax Policy Workshop Series such a rousing success:

• Jan. 25   Adam Chodorow (Arizona State), The Parsonage Exemption, 51 U.C. Davis L. Rev. ___ (2017)
• Feb. 6    Katherine Pratt (Loyola-L.A.), The Tax Definition of “Medical Care:” A Critique of the Startling IRS Arguments in O’Donnabhain v. Commissioner, 23 Mich. J. Gender & L. 313 (2016)
• Feb. 20   Joshua Blank (NYU), The Timing of Tax Transparency, 90 S. Cal. L. Rev. 449 (2017)
• Mar. 6    Erin Scharf (Arizona State), Hyper Preemption
• Mar. 27  Manoj Viswanathan (UC-Hastings), Tax Compliance in a Decentralizing Economy
• Apr. 10   Edward Kleinbard (USC), Capital Taxation In An Age Of Inequality, 90 S. Cal. L. Rev. 593 (2017)
• Apr. 24   Daniel Hemel (Chicago), Federalism as a Safeguard of Progressive Taxation, 93 N.Y.U. L. Rev. ___ (2017)

 

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Hemel Presents The Federalist Safeguards of Progressive Taxation Today At Pepperdine

Daniel Hemel (Chicago) presents The Federalist Safeguards of Progressive Taxation, 93 NYU L. Rev. ___ (2017), at Pepperdine today as part of our Tax Policy Workshop Series funded in part by a generous gift from Scott Racine:

This essay considers the distributional consequences of the Supreme Court’s federalism jurisprudence over the past quarter century, focusing specifically on the anticommandeering, anti-coercion, and state sovereign immunity doctrines. The first of these doctrines prevents Congress from compelling the states to administer federal programs; the second prevents Congress from achieving the same result through offers that for practical purposes the states cannot refuse; the third prohibits Congress from abrogating state sovereign immunity outside a limited class of cases. These doctrines vest the states with valuable entitlements and allow the states to sell those entitlements back to Congress for a price. In this respect, the doctrines have an intergovernmental distributional effect, shifting wealth from the federal government to the states.

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Kleinbard Presents Capital Taxation In An Age Of Inequality Today at Pepperdine

Edward Kleinbard (USC) presents Capital Taxation In An Age Of Inequality, 90 S. Cal. L. Rev. ___ (2017), at Pepperdine today as part of our Tax Policy Workshop Series funded in part by a generous gift from Scott Racine:

The standard view in the U.S. tax law academy remains that capital income taxation is both a poor idea in theory and completely infeasible in practice. But this ignores the first-order importance of political economy issues in the design of tax instruments. The pervasive presence of gifts and bequests renders moot the claim that the results obtained by Atkinson and Stiglitz (1976) counsel against taxing capital income in practice.

Taxing capital income is responsive to important political economy exigencies confronting the United States, including substantial tax revenue shortfalls relative to realistic government spending targets, increasing income and wealth inequality at the top end of distributions, and the surprising persistence of dynastic wealth. It also responds to a new strand of economic literature that argues that “inclusive growth” leads to higher growth.

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Viswanathan Presents Tax Compliance In A Decentralizing Economy Today At Pepperdine

Manoj Viswanathan (UC-Hastings) presents Tax Compliance in a Decentralizing Economy at Pepperdine today as part of our Tax Policy Workshop Series funded in part by a generous gift from Scott Racine:

Tax compliance in the United States has long relied on information from centralized intermediaries—the financial institutions, employers, and brokers that help ensure income is reported and taxes are paid. Yet while the IRS remains tied to these centralized entities, consumers and businesses are not. New technologies, such as the on-demand sharing platform economy (companies such as Airbnb, Uber, and Instacart) and the blockchain (the platform on which Bitcoin is based) are providing new, decentralized options for exchanging goods and services. Without legislative and agency intervention, these technologies pose a critical threat to the reporting system underlying domestic and international tax compliance.

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Scharff Presents Hyper Preemption Today At Pepperdine

Erin Scharf (Arizona State) presents Hyper Preemption: A Reordering of the State-Local Relationship at Pepperdine today as part of our Tax Policy Workshop Series funded in part by a generous gift from Scott Racine:

The role of cities in our federalist system is once again in the news.  President Donald Trump’s executive order purporting to cut federal funding for “sanctuary cities” was a newspaper headline across the country.  However, this federal-municipal showdown is part of a much larger story about the changing regulatory role of cities.  Even as cities cast themselves as defiant against conservative federal policies, many are finding themselves in a much weaker position with respect to state policymaking.

Already, state legislators across the country are introducing bills that would cut state funding to local governments implementing “sanctuary city” policies. Such efforts are among the many preemption bills pending in statehouses across the country. Local governments, as creature of state law, are required to conform to state law, and legislatures have used this power to block municipal regulatory policies. 

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Blank Presents The Timing Of Tax Transparency Today At Pepperdine

Joshua Blank (NYU) presents The Timing of Tax Transparency, 90 S. Cal. L. Rev. ___ (2017), at Pepperdine today as part of our Tax Policy Workshop Series funded in part by a generous gift from Scott Racine:

Fairness in the administration of the tax law is the subject of intense debate in the United States. As recent headlines reveal, the Internal Revenue Service has been accused of failing to enforce the tax law equitably in its review of tax-exempt status applications by political organizations, the international tax structures of multinational corporations, and the estate tax returns of millionaires, among other areas. Many have argued that greater “tax transparency” would better empower the public to hold the IRS accountable and the IRS to defend itself against accusations of malfeasance. Mandatory public disclosure of taxpayers’ tax return information is often proposed as a way to achieve greater tax transparency. Yet, in addition to concerns regarding exposure of personal and proprietary information, broad public disclosure measures pose potential threats to the taxing authority’s ability to enforce the tax law.

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Pratt Presents The IRS's Startling Attempt To Deny Medical Expense Deduction For Cost Of Male-To-Female Transition Today At Pepperdine

Katherine Pratt (Loyola-L.A.) presents The Tax Definition of “Medical Care:” A Critique of the Startling IRS Arguments in O’Donnabhain v. Commissioner, 23 Mich. J. Gender & L. 313 (2016), at Pepperdine today as part of our Tax Policy Workshop Series funded in part by a generous gift from Scott Racine:

This Article critiques the startling arguments made by the Internal Revenue Service (“IRS”) in O’Donnabhain v. Commissioner, a case in which the issue was whether a person diagnosed with gender identity disorder (“GID”) could take a federal tax deduction for the costs of male-to-female medical transition, including hormone treatment, genital surgery, and breast augmentation.

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Chodorow Presents The Parsonage Exemption Today At Pepperdine

Adam Chodorow (Arizona State) presents The Parsonage Exemption at Pepperdine today as part of our Tax Policy Workshop Series funded in part by a generous gift from Scott Racine:

The parsonage exemption allows “ministers of the gospel” to exclude the value of housing benefits from income, whether received in-kind or as a cash allowance. Critics argue that the provision is unconstitutional, and the dispute is likely to make it to the Supreme Court. This Article fills an important gap in the debate over the parsonage exemption by offering a nuanced explanation of how it and other housing provisions function within the tax code. Placing the parsonage exemption in its proper tax context makes clear that (1) other tax-free housing provisions and exemptions for religious organizations cannot provide the parsonage exemption constitutional cover; (2) the parsonage exemption involves significantly more entanglement than would the generally applicable housing provision; (3) permitting ministers to receive tax-free housing violates the core tax principles of horizontal and vertical equity; and (4) other exemptions for religious organizations cannot justify the parsonage exemption.

Pepperdine Tax Policy Workshop Series (Spring 2017)

Here is the schedule for my Spring 2017 Pepperdine Tax Policy Workshop Series:

• Jan. 25   Adam Chodorow (Arizona State), The Parsonage Exemption, 51 U.C. Davis L. Rev. ___ (2017)
• Feb. 6    Katherine Pratt (Loyola-L.A.), The Tax Definition of “Medical Care:” A Critique of the Startling IRS Arguments in O’Donnabhain v. Commissioner, 23 Mich. J. Gender & L. 313 (2016)
• Feb. 20   Joshua Blank (NYU), The Timing of Tax Transparency, 90 S. Cal. L. Rev. 449 (2017)
• Mar. 6    Erin Scharf (Arizona State), Hyper Preemption
• Mar. 27  Manoj Viswanathan (UC-Hastings), Tax Compliance in a Decentralizing Economy
• Apr. 10   Edward Kleinbard (USC), Capital Taxation In An Age Of Inequality, 90 S. Cal. L. Rev. 593 (2017)
• Apr. 24   Daniel Hemel (Chicago), Federalism as a Safeguard of Progressive Taxation, 93 N.Y.U. L. Rev. ___ (2017)

I will of course blog each professor's paper on the day of their presentation.  Southern California professors and practitioners are welcome to attend any of the sessions (11:00 a.m. - 12:30 p.m.) — just let me know.

• Pepperdine Tax Policy Workshop Series (Spring 2014)
• Pepperdine Tax Policy Workshop Series (Spring 2015)
• Pepperdine Tax Policy Workshop Series (Spring 2016)

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Kahng Presents Who Owns Human Capital? Today At Pepperdine

Lily Kahng (Seattle) presents Who Owns Human Capital?, 93 Wash. U. L. Rev. ___ (2017), at Pepperdine today as part of our Tax Policy Workshop Series funded in part by a generous gift from Scott Racine:

This Article analyzes the tax law’s capital income preference through the lens of intellectual capital, an increasingly important driver of economic productivity whose value derives primarily from workers’ knowledge, experience and skills. The Article discusses how business owners increasingly are able to “propertize” labor into intellectual capital — to control their workers and appropriate the returns on their labor through the expansive use of intellectual property laws, contract and employment laws, and other legal mechanisms. The Article then shows how the tax law provides significant subsidies to the process of propertization and thereby contributes to the inequitable distribution of returns between business owners and workers. The Article’s analysis further reveals the tax law’s fundamental capital-labor distinction to be questionable, perhaps even illusory, an insight which has profound implications for the tax law.

Update:  Post-presentation lunch:

Oh Presents How The Rich Drive Progressive Marginal Tax Rates Today At Pepperdine

Jason S. Oh (UCLA) presents How the Rich Drive Progressive Marginal Tax Rates at Pepperdine today as part of our Tax Policy Workshop Series funded in part by a generous gift from Scott Racine:

Why do income tax systems consistently feature progressive marginal rates? The existing literature tells a political story focusing on the preferences of the poor and middle class – high rates at the top of the rate schedule can fund greater redistribution. This Article argues that progressive marginal rates can alternatively be explained by focusing on the preferences of the middle class and the rich regarding the bottom of the rate schedule. Specifically, these groups benefit from inframarginal rate cuts at low levels of income. This alternative explanation of marginal rate progressivity is attractive because it focuses on the rich, a group which intuition and research suggest wields disproportionate political power.

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