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A simple, functional and PYTHONIC web framework for professional use.
A simple XML taglib processor. It reads in an XML document and, based on XML namespaces, chooses a library to handle the part of the XML tree within that namespace. The result is a new XML document.1 weekly downloads
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Assorted projects. General-purpose libraries for Python, C++, Scala, bash, and others. Meta-programming tools. System utilities. UI components. Web APIs. Configuration files. Benchmarks. Programming competition entries. And much more.1 weekly downloads
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Application for logging, planning, and searching astronomy observations. Written in Python/Tkinter with support for xmlrpc/SOAP as a secondary goal.
Asylum will build and run all the commands needed to build songbird. With little user input needed. This tool will be for both beginners and advanced users. This will do those cumbersome commands for you! All you have to know to use this is just English!2 weekly downloads
2D & 3D TeX-Aware Vector Graphics Language341 weekly downloads
AsyncSocket is a python module used for asynchronous socket connections that supports connection and read/write timeouts.1 weekly downloads
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Atma Web Framework is based on TwistedMatrix Network Framework and provides a high-quality environment for the development of rich and robust web applications.1 weekly downloads
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Aualé: The Game of Mancala
Play mancala against your computer and record your games1 weekly downloads
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Audiere is a portable audio library which supports playing MP3, Ogg Vorbis, FLAC, WAV, IT, XM, S3M, and MOD files. You can use it from C, C++, Python, Java, Delphi, and any language that supports XPCOM (JavaScript in Mozilla, for example).67 weekly downloads
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User-friendly graphical tool for controlling audio mixer settings and configuring Creative Audigy Sound Cards.1 weekly downloads
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Frontend for mpg123 and cdrecord that lets easily create audio CDs from MP3 files. It is written in Python and uses GTK/GNOME for GUI.1 weekly downloads
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AudioEnclave is a linux audio server that can be used as a web-based jukebox for any sort of community setting- your home or a dorm hall. It allows for in-depth searching, playback on multiple channels, playlists- all through an intuitive website.
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Python Script to process a wave file and transform to movement (key frames) on Blender 2.5. Input: sound file (.wav) Output: Key frames direct into the selected object Work to meshes and bones (location, scale or rotation in any axis)2 weekly downloads
AudioSavant is a music visualization software that is aimed to allow students to get a better understanding of music. It is based in the OLPC's TamTam application, with a set of modifications from the information visualization world.1 weekly downloads
PMML-compliant scoring engine and analytic toolkit1 weekly downloads
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text:
I parked my 2007 equinox, it worked great before parking it and then the next morning I went to use it and it barely moves in any gear D/I/L and reverse. It was very cold out all night. Have you heard of this before? It obviously has something to do with the transmission.
Saturday, January 19th, 2013 AT 11:17 AM

subset: commoncrawl


text:
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Here's my issue : I need to build a C# application with WPF where the users can select numerous lines from a DataGrid. But, despite the fact I put the selection mode to "Extended" I'm only able to select a single row from the GUI.
I thought I could circumvent this problem by programmatically select the row the user clicks, but again I can only select one row at time ! I searched a lot on the internet but didn't find a simple way to select multiple rows in a datagrid
I'm a beginner with WPF and I'm not very good with DataBinding and MVVM pattern, so if the the answers could be simple it'd be perfect !
Thank's a lot !


text:
Susan Diane Ruttan (née Dunsrud; born September 16, 1948, Oregon City, Oregon) is an American actress, best known for her role as Roxanne Melman on L.A. Law (1986–1993)....
Connect any celebrity with Susan Ruttan to see how closely they are linked... romantically!
hi susan.I hope you are doing well
Hi Susan I always liked watching you. People say I look like you and I`ve even been mistaken for you so I looked you up to say hello to my look a like You`re great.Deb
Sue , Nice to see your success. I remember you as a delightful person , and fun to read with . I thought we would have played in `Harvey` together . You were perfect as Myrtle Mae. Best Regards. Marty


text:
I love Andi's look because it speaks to me about a femininity that I don't see so often in the streets of New York. Okay well, my New York… Maybe I should go uptown more...
Emmanuelle in Paris
It's not Paris week on the blog without a little Emmanuelle Alt, right? Right. Right! This...
At Sacai
The name has been making a buzz among fashion editors for a few years now. I had photographed the...
Be Still My Heart
Just when I thought Valentino couldn't possibly get any better, they do dreamy leather!
Fall Trends: Belted Coats
The Trend: Belted Coats How I would wear it: My love of coats is no secret to you all! This idea of...
Almost Spring
Can you tell I am getting antsy for spring? It's starting to warm up (at least the snow is...
Mccallan on Howard Street
I'm not sure if it's a good thing or a bad thing that the Isabel Marant store is so...


text:
How can I get the javac task to use an existing fileset? In my build.xml I have created several filesets to be used in multiple places throughout build file. Here is how they have been defined:
<fileset dir = "${src}"
id = "java.source.all">
<include name = "**/*.java" />
<fileset dir = "${src}"
id = "java.source.examples">
<include name = "**/Examples/**/*.java" />
<fileset dir = "${src}"
id = "java.source.tests">
<include name = "**/Tests/*.java" />
<fileset dir = "${src}"
id = "java.source.project">
<include name = "**/*.java" />
<exclude name = "**/Examples/**/*.java" />
<exclude name = "**/Tests/**/*.java" />
I have also used macrodef to compile the java files so the javac task does not need to be repeated multiple times. The macro looks like this:
<macrodef name="compile">
<attribute name="sourceref"/>
<javac srcdir = "${src}"
destdir = "${build}"
classpathref = "classpath"
includeantruntime = "no"
debug = "${debug}">
<filelist dir="." files="@{sourceref}" /> <-- email is about this
What I'm trying to do is compile only the classes that are needed for specific targets not all the targets in the source tree. And do so without having to specify the files every time. Here are how the targets are defined:
<target name = "compile-examples"
depends = "init">
<compile sourceref = "${toString:java.source.examples}" />
<target name = "compile-project"
depends = "init">
<compile sourceref = "${toString:java.source.project}" />
<target name = "compile-tests"
depends = "init">
<compile sourceref = "${toString:java.source.tests}" />
As you can see each target specifies the java files to be compiled as a simi-colon separated list of absolute file names. The only problem with this is that javac does not support filelist. It also does not support fileset, path or pathset. I've tried using but it treats the list as a single file name. Another thing I tried is sending the reference directly (not using toString) and using but include does not have a ref attribute.
SO THE QUESTION IS: How do you get the javac task to use a reference to a fileset that was defined in another part of the build file? I'm not interested in solutions that cause me to have multiple javac tasks. Completely re-writting the macro is acceptable. Changes to the targets are also acceptable provided redundant code between targets is kept to a minimum.
p.s. Another problem is that fileset wants a comma separated list. I've only done a brief search for a way to convert semi-colons to commas and haven't found a way to do that.
p.p.s. Sorry for the yelling but some people are too quick to post responses that don't address the subject.


text:
Alix Taylor's Reviews > Shadows at Midnight
Shadows at Midnight
by Elizabeth Jennings
by Elizabeth Jennings
Alix Taylor's review
Oct 01, 2010
Read in September, 2010
"This book opens with a bang and it does not disappoint all the way through." See full review HERE and a GIVEAWAY of this book ending 9/30/2010!!!!
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The Black Ace: A Brad Shade Thriller Paperback – Mar 12 2013
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Product Description
Praise for The Code:
"One of this continent's master craftsmen of sporting prose"…as fine a writer as can be found in any field."
--Sports Illustrated
"This thriller has enough juice to satisfy those who've never been to a rink."
--Library Journal
"[Joyce's] knowledgeable, engagingly cynical perspective on hockey should prove compelling even for those readers with no interest in the sport."
--Publishers Weekly
"Part CSI, part L.A. Law, part Hockey Night in Canada—Gare Joyce deserves a championship ring for his uncanny portrayal of Brad Shade, the earthy, educated hockey scout sleuth. This is sports writing, crime writing, and just plain writing as good as it gets." —Roy MacGregor
"The Code is surely one of the great 'insider' fictions of the professional hockey world. Funny and full of dirty fights both on and off the ice, it delivers an astringent look into big league machinations and the human costs of playing the game."
—Andrew Pyper, author of The Guardians
"For an amateur-detective story to work, the main character, the non-cop investigator, has to be well-drawn and engaging. Shade is both, and it's his clever rapscallion personality that propels the story." —Winnipeg Free Press
About the Author
G.B. Joyce is a feature writer and editor with Sportsnet magazine. He has written for ESPN the Magazine, The Globe and Mail, and the Ottawa Citizen, and has won four National Magazine Awards. Joyce is the author of eight books.
Customer Reviews
Top Customer Reviews
The author has an exceptionally witty and fast paced writing style. The plot was good. The characters were likeable. The only thing I didn't like about it was that it made Swift Current, which in my experience is a fine city, look like a cesspool both physically and population-wise.
Most Helpful Customer Reviews on Amazon.com (beta)
Brad Shade's lacing up, at the Swift Current Dome
First off, this is going to remind no one of either Dashiell Hammett or Elmore Leonard. I expect that kind of random boasting from the publisher, but this comparison on the front cover was from a newspaper reviewer. If you like comparisons, the book starts out slow and you're thinking maybe Robert Parker trying his hand at a Myron Bolitar mystery/thriller. But you soon realize that's a little off, the wisecracks aren't said aloud, and are bitter rather than defiant, always directed as much at the protagonist as anything else. They story-telling is off-kilter as well, lacking the conventional linear drive. When the author kicks it up about a quarter of the way through, you might get excited and think this is the next Ross Macdonald. But soon after you realize the twisted tale is just getting started and Gare Joyce is skating his own way to produce a great mystery novel, one of the best I have read in years.
The Black Ace blends two outstanding elements. First is the miswired protagonist. He feels shame when he should feel guilt, guilt when he should feel pride and pride when he should feel shame. He is bitter toward everything he needs, and acts as if that combination somehow adds up to love. But it all makes sense. You don't like him or dislike him, he just seems real. The victim in the story is his antithesis, and the resulting synthesis results in a tremendously satisfying story.
The second outstanding element is the author's masterful and original style. At first the book seems overwritten, with two lines of embellishment for every straightforward line of plot or dialog. It mixes first-person and third-person voice. They are mixed, not just alternated, sometimes the protagonist makes reference to things we know about from the omniscient narrator, things the protagonist shouldn't know. At other times he fails to tell us important details that he does know, important enough that leaving them out is deceptive. The most spectacular chapters in the book, the ones that blow the reader away, are in a kind of anonymous-person voice. The book has the most natural and effective use of ambiguous person description since Lawrence Sanders. It merges introspection, action, dialog, flashback and foreshadowing in complex, multi-layered accounts, like building a myth out of the most seedy and vulgar ingredients.
There are a lot of flaws in the book, but they just don't matter. The plot was bought at knock-down auction from the second season of Veronica Mars after that show was cancelled. Too much of it is explained by a guy who guarded the secrets rigorously at great cost for decades, then opens up for no particular reason to a stranger. The book is filled with loose ends (the suicide car is playing both the radio and the cassette deck at the same time, a biker has a limp prominently mentioned twice but never explained, and so on) while other ends are tied off implausibly in one-off explanations unrelated to the plot. The Native American sidekick is far too passive and indirect, and his mild psychic abilities are a clichéd distraction. The book spends a lot of effort at setting scenes, but once set, the background is forgotten. The biggest example is constant references to cold, wind and personal physical discomfort; but the author never makes it feel real. There is a superficial description, but no depth or detail to make it more than just words. The final resolution is neither satisfying nor effectively unsatisfying, just meh. But, as I said, the glorious writing and arresting protagonist hurdle over such minor quibbles like Bobby Orr winning scoring titles playing the blue line.
I recommend this book most highly. I have not read the first book in the series, nor any of the author's other books, but I'm going to get started right away.
The story may sound like it's about a murder, but it's really about Brad Shade growing up, discovering life is messy and personal and might be better traveled with a few friends.
Might be. He's not sure of that.
What makes this story exceptional is the author's voice--Brad Shade's voice. He's drenched in ice hockey. That's what he did for thirty+ years and he can't let got even as he knows he's too old and it hasn't given him a particularly good life anyway. There is lots of ice hockey language, phrasing, allusions. I spent the first thirty pages lost. I'm not sure why I kept reading, but I did, and GB Joyce let up enough that I understand Slade sufficiently to want to follow his journey of 350+ pages. Here's a particularly illuminating passage:
"I wanted to say that only the mentally ill commit suicide and mental illness isn't something that's there for explaining. Not by family and friends. Not by scientists who can confidently explain most things. Not by men of the cloth who can doubtlessly explain everything. Not by a mope like me who struggles to explain anything. If I had known her better or if she had been a total stranger, I would have managed to spit that out.
"I couldn't."
This homespun, dark wisdom, distilled from a life lived hard, kept me reading.
Overall, a good read, probably better if you love ice hockey. I'm not sure I'll read the rest of the Brad Shade series, but I don't feel like I wasted my time meeting him.
I enjoyed some of the characters, most notably "Chief". Sadly, the dead man, The Black Ace of the title was far more interesting than our protagonist! Still, he was refreshingly unlike many of the main characters in the mysteries that I kept on reading until the end, and even enjoyed the trip!
I'm no prude, but the sex scenes seems thrown in there for shock effect, and didn't really advance the plot. I think they could and should have been cut because they didn't add to the action, nor did they really tell me anything about the character I didn't already know (or guess). To me, they were little better than a small almost pornographic throw away scene like is common in male adventure flicks and, quite frankly, detracted from the book for me. If I want to read pornographic material, I'll go get a romance novel! (Just kidding). The scenes seemed to be thrown in there to make you see Brad as an "anti-hero" but all they did for me was leave me wondering what any woman would see in him. He must be either spectacularly good looking to warrant such attention, or maybe the women who cross is path are just desperate?
In short, I enjoyed the book, and I'll try the series again. But, the plot seemed contrived, the sex scenes were unneeded and detracted from the book, and the most interesting character died in the first chapter. I'lll give the series another try, but I have mixed feelings about this first exposure.
The best character is the murder victim who is found dead in the first few pages. Unfortunately, he does not say much. Brad Shade is a character I just could not figure out. On the one hand he tries to be the hard-oiled P.I. On the other, he philosophizes unmercifully. He doesn't want to be a womanizer, but beds 'em easily. This is in the first person and Brad drones.
My biggest criticism of the book - which I enjoyed for more than the first half - is that it really dragged towards the end. It came to a resounding halt with about thirty pages to go. Then, of course, it wrapped up in two with a fairly unsatisfying ending.
There are great mystery writers out there. Too many good ones to spend time on this mediocre one.


text:
Thursday, May 12, 2016
Law School Entry-Level Faculty Hiring Up 19%
Sarah Lawsky (UC-Irvine; moving to Northwestern), Spring Self-Reported Entry Level Hiring Report 2016:
May 12, 2016 in Legal Education | Permalink | Comments (0)
NTA 46th Annual Spring Symposium: Tax Policy At The Crossroads
The 46th Annual Spring Symposium on Tax Policy at the Crossroads: What Direction Next? hosted by the National Tax Association and American Tax Policy Institute kicks off today in Washington, D.C. Today's highlight is the presentation of the Davie-Davis Award for Public Service to Leonard Burman (Director, Tax Policy Center; Professor, Syracuse University) by Daniel Shaviro (NYU).
May 12, 2016 in Conferences, Tax | Permalink | Comments (0)
Trump Won't Release Tax Returns Prior To Election
- Al.com, Trump's Tax Returns Could Contain Clues to Wealth, Donations and ... Golf?
- Bloomberg, Trump Says Doesn't Expect to Release Tax Returns by November
- Crain's New York Business, Here's Why Trump Doesn't Want You to See His Tax Returns
- Fortune, Here's What Might Be Hiding in Donald Trump's Tax Returns
- David Herzig (Valparaiso), What If Trump Becomes President While His Tax Returns Are Under IRS Audit?
- National Review, Trump's Refusal to Release Tax Returns Is a Ticking Time Bomb for the GOP
- New York Times, What We Can Learn From Donald Trump's Unreleased Tax Returns
May 12, 2016 in Political News, Tax | Permalink | Comments (3)
The 16% Of Americans Earning $100,000+ Pay 80% Of All Federal Income Taxes
Washington Free Beacon, Americans Earning Six Figures or More Pay Nearly 80% of Individual Income Taxes; These Earners Represent Only 16% of Individual Income Tax Filers:
Americans earning six figures or more paid 79.5 percent of the nation's share in individual income taxes in 2014, according to the latest preliminary data from the Internal Revenue Service.
Americans paid a total of $1,358,093,169,000 to the IRS in individual income taxes in 2014. Americans earning $100,000 or more paid $1,079,392,180,000 to the IRS, or 79.5 percent of the total income tax paid.
While those top earners contributed almost four-fifths of the total amount of individual income taxes, they represented only 16 percent of the total number of individual income tax returns reported to the IRS. ...
May 12, 2016 in IRS News, Tax | Permalink | Comments (6)
Merritt: The Real Resistance To Clinical Legal Education
Following up on yesterday's post, Robert Kuehn (Washington University), Clinical Costs — Separating Fact From Opinion: Deborah Jones Merritt (Ohio State), Prices and Priorities:
We don't favor LSAT scholarships over need-based ones because budgets force us to do so; we make that choice to pursue higher rankings. Similarly, we don't cater to the demands of tenured research faculty, rather than expanding clinical education, because our budgets are limited. We make that choice because it suits us (the tenured faculty) and because we hope, once again, that our choice will propel higher rankings.
May 12, 2016 in Legal Education | Permalink | Comments (1)
The IRS Scandal, Day 1099
Paul C. Barton (Tax Notes), Should Political Nonprofits Disclose More Frequently?:
Not only do many politically active nonprofits operate with dark money from undisclosed donors, but they carry out their work behind another shield, some say: the time lag before having to report their spending to the IRS.
Long before the IRS receives a politically oriented nonprofit's Form 990, "Report of Organization Exempt From Income Tax," the election involved will have come and gone. With easily available extensions, a nonprofit exempt under section 501(c)(4) can have up to 10-1/2 months after the end of its fiscal year before filing its return.
In an ideal world, say advocates of campaign finance reform, there would be more frequent and thorough disclosure of nonprofits' political spending. But, they say, that would require a Republican Congress, one already hostile to policing these groups, to change either the tax code, federal election law, or both. Meanwhile, there are some reports they have to file in a more timely fashion. For instance, they must report to the Federal Election Commission, sometimes in as little as 24 hours, after they pay for an ad that advocates the election or defeat of a candidate for federal office. A 24-hour disclosure rule also applies to some television or radio ads purchased within 30 days of a primary election or 60 days of a general election that mention specific candidates in the context of an issue but don't expressly advocate their election or defeat. These are called "electioneering communications."
Within a two-year federal election cycle, however, there could be spending on issue ads that fall outside those time windows, or on other ads easily construed as political, that are not included under political spending on Form 990. John Pomeranz of Harmon, Curran, Spielberg & Eisenberg LLP gave the example of ads that might feature Republican senators up for reelection this fall and that mention their refusal to consider the nomination of D.C. Circuit Chief Judge Merrick B. Garland to the Supreme Court.
As a result, Form 990 totals can fall far short of telling the whole story, complicating the all-important evaluation of whether nonprofits are spending less than half their budget on politics, the requirement for keeping their exempt status."There are things that almost anyone would acknowledge as having a possible impact on an election that the IRS might well agree are not reportable as political activity on the [Form] 990," Pomeranz told Tax Analysts.
Added Notre Dame law professor Lloyd Hitoshi Mayer: "I agree that the annual tax filing system is a poor fit with the frantic pace of electoral activities. By the time the IRS or the public receives the information, the relevant election is long past."
But Cleta Mitchell of Foley & Lardner LLP, who represents several conservative 501(c)(4) organizations, says the reporting on issue ads is done even if the communications are not election related. "These morons on the left act like" that rule has never been implemented, she said. ...
Mayer said neither the IRS nor Treasury is going to stick its neck out to change the system. "Even if in theory Treasury has the necessary authority, it would be subject to withering criticism from Congress and elsewhere if it tried to unilaterally impose additional filing requirements on politically active exempt organizations," he said.
But it's clear that the current system "makes it very hard for the IRS to identify any improper spending until after the election," said Lawrence M. Noble, general counsel for the Campaign Legal Center. ...
But Ellen Aprill, professor at Loyola Law School, cautions in a new article for the Pittsburgh Tax Review that Congress has so intertwined sections 527 and 501(c)(4) that any stepped-up regulation of the latter is going to require looking at the former [The Section 527 Obstacle to Meaningful Section 501(c)(4) Regulation, 13 Pitt. Tax Rev. 43 (2015)]. Many activities that are tax exempt for section 527 groups are limited for noncharitable 501(c)s and forbidden for 501(c)(3)s, she writes, adding, "Reconciling political campaign intervention under current law is fraught and difficult."
May 12, 2016 in IRS News, IRS Scandal, Tax | Permalink | Comments (3)
Wednesday, May 11, 2016
More On The 'Grim' ABA Jobs Data For Law School Graduates
Kyle McEntee (Law School Transparency), How Law School Job Rates Changed This Year:
Last week, the American Bar Association released the latest law school employment data. The entry-level market for new graduates remains grim.
Nationally, the legal job rate is up slightly from 58% to 59.2% for 2015 graduates. However, the raw number of legal jobs declined to levels not seen since 2011. The number of new entry-level jobs at large firms, on the other hand, remains steady — although the types of jobs offered by large firms continue to diversify.
With fewer students enrolled today, jobs rates in 2016 and beyond should improve, even if the raw number of jobs continues to decline. But given that law schools still face significant financial pressure, administrators will be tempted to increase enrollment to keep the doors open. Current employment rates indicate that, for the vast majority of schools, that is not an equitable idea.
May 11, 2016 in Legal Education | Permalink | Comments (8)
Sunstein: Using Increased Chevron Deference To Combat Growing 'Partyism' In America
Cass R. Sunstein (Harvard), Partyism, 2016 U. Chi. Legal F. ___:
"Partyism" is a form of hostility and prejudice that operates across political lines. For example, some Republicans have an immediate aversive reaction to Democrats, and some Democrats have the same aversive reaction to Republicans, so much so that they would discriminate against them in hiring or promotion decisions, or in imposing punishment. If elected officials suffer from partyism – perhaps because their constituents do – they will devalue proposals from the opposing party and refuse to enter into agreements with its members, even if their independent assessment, freed from partyism, would be favorably disposed toward those proposals or agreements. In the United States, partyism has been rapidly growing, and it is quite pronounced – in some ways, more so than racism. It also has a series of adverse effects on governance itself, above all by making it difficult to enact desirable legislation and thus disrupting the system of separation of powers. Under circumstances of severe partyism, relatively broad delegations of authority to the executive branch, and a suitably receptive approach to the Chevron principle, have considerable appeal as ways of allowing significant social problems to be addressed. This conclusion bears on both domestic issues and foreign affairs.
May 11, 2016 in Scholarship, Tax | Permalink | Comments (2)
Taxing Wealthy Colleges Would Do More Harm Than Good
Bloomberg View editorial, Taxing Wealthy Colleges Would Do More Harm Than Good:
America's universities have become behemoths -- the result of swelling donations, rising tuitions and growing anxiety among parents that their children cannot succeed without college degrees. None are flourishing more than the most elite private schools, eight of which have endowments of $10 billion or more.
These riches have set some members of Congress, state legislators and local residents thinking: Why are these enormous cash piles left untaxed and unregulated? The short answer is that it would undermine the good work that universities do to educate generations of Americans and energize the economy. ...
May 11, 2016 in Tax | Permalink | Comments (2)
Joint Tax Committee: Overview Of The Federal Tax System
The Joint Committee on Taxation has released Overview Of The Federal Tax System As In Effect For 2016 (JCX-43-16):
This document ... provides a summary of the present-law Federal tax system as in effect for 2016. The current Federal tax system has four main elements: (1) an income tax on individuals and corporations (which consists of both a "regular" income tax and an alternative minimum tax); (2) payroll taxes on wages (and corresponding taxes on self-employment income) to finance certain social insurance programs; (3) estate, gift, and generation-skipping taxes, and (4) excise taxes on selected goods and services. This document provides a broad overview of each of these elements.
May 11, 2016 in Congressional News, Tax | Permalink | Comments (0)
Kwon: The Criminality Of Tax Planning
Michelle M. Kwon (Tennessee), The Criminality of Tax Planning, 18 Fla. Tax Rev. 153 (2015):
In recent years, the federal government has adopted an aggressive prosecution policy that targets tax advisors who help their clients evade taxes. Increased prosecutions coupled with the present-day sophistication of tax practice call for a critical examination of the willfulness standard applied to tax advisors who use the Code and Treasury regulations as part of their regular practices. This is something no previous legal scholarship has done.
To establish willfulness, the government must show that a person accused of a tax crime intentionally violated a known legal duty. Because knowledge of illegality is an element of the government's tax evasion case, prosecutors must negate a defendant's claim of ignorance or misunderstanding of the law, which is evaluated subjectively. The mistake of tax law defense and the knowledge of illegality standard are anomalies since ignorance of the law usually is not an excuse. The Supreme Court, however, has said that tax law is special due to the need to protect average citizens from prosecution for innocent mistakes made due to the complexity of the tax laws. The same high standard of willfulness that applies to average citizens also applies to tax professionals.
This Article aims to do two primary things. First, it demonstrates that consideration should be given to broadening the current willfulness standard as it is applied to tax advisors. Second, it evaluates the suitability of Samuel Buell and Lisa Kern Griffin's work on "consciousness of wrongdoing" as one possible approach to consider.
May 11, 2016 in Scholarship, Tax | Permalink | Comments (0)
Winston Churchill: 'Serial Tax Avoider'
The Telegraph, Churchill a 'Serial Tax Avoider':
Sir Winston Churchill was a serial tax avoider who exploited loopholes and faked his own retirement in collusion with the chairman of Inland Revenue, his biographer has claimed.
David Lough, a historian and author, said Churchill had learned to use Inland Revenue as a "beast who can be tamed and bent" after finding himself in financial difficulties.
Not only did the politician pretend to retire in order to halve his tax bill, the author claimed, he persuaded the Revenue's young chairman to help him figure out a way to save his earnings for himself. ...
May 11, 2016 in Celebrity Tax Lore, Tax | Permalink | Comments (1)
Clausing: Profit Shifting and U.S. Corporate Tax Policy Reform
Kimberly A. Clausing (Reed College), Profit Shifting and U.S. Corporate Tax Policy Reform:
This paper argues that the erosion of the U.S. corporate income tax base is a large policy problem. Profit shifting by U.S. multinational corporations is reducing U.S. government tax revenues by more than $100 billion each year, and other countries are facing similar concerns.
Yet given the starting point of the current U.S. corporate tax system, potential reformers face a dilemma. Reforms that would protect the U.S. corporate tax base may not find support in the multinational business community, which is more concerned with perceived competitiveness problems. But reforms that address competitiveness worries—such as the "toothless territorial" system that many in the multinational business community favor—would make the tax base erosion problem far worse.
May 11, 2016 in Scholarship, Tax | Permalink | Comments (0)
LoPucki: Six-Hour Experiential Learning Accreditation Requirement Puts ABA On Collision Course With Ph.D.-Laden Law Faculties
National Law Journal op-ed: With Ph.D. Hiring Trend, Who'll Help Law Students Find the Courthouse?, by Lynn M. LoPucki (UCLA):
The American Bar Association's adoption two years ago of an accreditation standard requiring law schools to provide students with six credit hours of experiential learning has put the ABA on a collision course with the tenure-track faculties of American law schools.
May 11, 2016 in Legal Education | Permalink | Comments (6)
Kuehn: Clinical Costs — Separating Fact From Opinion
Robert Kuehn (Washington University), Clinical Costs: Separating Fact From Opinion:
The late Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan once observed, "Everyone is entitled to his own opinion, but not his own facts." When it comes to expanding clinical legal education, the knee-jerk opinion is that it is too expensive for legal education to follow the lead of other professional schools and ensure that every student graduates with a clinical experience through a law clinic or externship. Even the richest law schools couldn't resist playing the cost card to scare the ABA out of requiring additional professional skills training: "Requiring all law schools to provide 15 experiential credit hours to each student will impose large costs on law schools, costs that would have to be passed on to students. . . . Even a law school with significant financial resources could not afford such an undertaking."
Yet, the facts show otherwise — every school, from the well-heeled to the impecunious, can provide a clinical experience to each student without increasing tuition.
May 11, 2016 in Legal Education, Scholarship | Permalink | Comments (1)
IRS Employee Got Unemployment For 5 Years Before Anyone Noticed
The Daily Caller, IRS Employee Got Unemployment For 5 Years Before Anyone Noticed:
A former Internal Revenue Service (IRS) employee collected unemployment benefits for five years before anyone caught her, according to the Department of Justice (DOJ).
Yvonne E. Borders recently pleaded guilty to stealing government funds after collecting $18,550 in unemployment benefits from January 2009 through December 2013, while working for the U.S. Department of Treasury in New York.
May 11, 2016 in IRS News, Tax | Permalink | Comments (0)
Trigger Warnings For Oxford Law Students 'Distressed' By Crime In Criminal Law Class
HeatStreet, Trigger Warnings for Oxford Law Students 'Distressed' by Crime:
Oxford students studying criminal law have been told they can duck of lectures if they find the crimes they cover upsetting.
Aspiring barristers at the prestigious school now have the option of skipping teaching on "potentially distressing" acts if they do not feel up to it.
May 11, 2016 | Permalink | Comments (13)
The IRS Scandal, Day 1098
Politico, Morning Tax:
IT'S TUESDAY, and we're marking the third anniversary of the IRS's tea party controversy — or more specifically, the day that Lois Lerner answered a planted question at an American Bar Association conference. (That's LLAPQABA, for short.). ...
THREE YEARS LATER: We don't have the space to give a full recap of the full sordid tale since Lerner acknowledged the IRS improperly scrutinized conservative organizations seeking tax-exempt status. (The short version: People on the right believe it was intentional targeting, while those on the left see bureaucratic mistakes.) But Morning Tax did ask Rep. Peter Roskam (R-Ill.), the chairman of the House Ways and Means Oversight Subcommittee, where he thinks matters stand with the IRS three years later.
The takeaways: Roskam said Republicans believe the IRS is still dragging its feet on making key reforms, but made the case that the renewed focus on the agency led to a taxpayer bill of rights and even changes to civil forfeiture rules. "We've made significant progress, but nobody's breathing a sigh of relief."
The problems with cybersecurity and identity theft have gotten so pronounced, and are affecting so many taxpayers, that Republicans have had to call something of a détente with the IRS — see, for instance, that $290 million funding increase the agency got several months back. "The cyber issue is ripening very quickly, and you don't get the sense the IRS is on top of it," Roskam said. "When the IRS wants to do something well, they can."
IRS Commissioner John Koskinen won't be getting impeached. "By mid-July, the congressional year will essentially be done," Roskam said. House Oversight Chairman Jason Chaffetz (R-Utah) has been leading the charge for impeachment but recently signaled that he could accept a censure of Koskinen.
FROM THE OTHER SIDE: Rep. Elijah Cummings of Maryland, the top Democrat at House Oversight, on the anniversary: "House Republican efforts to impeach or censure the IRS commissioner are exercises in partisanship and a total waste of time and money. 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. Republicans have wasted tens of millions of taxpayer dollars chasing false political conspiracy theories."
May 11, 2016 in IRS News, IRS Scandal, Tax | Permalink | Comments (5)
Tuesday, May 10, 2016
Grit: The Power Of Passion And Perseverance
Following up on last week's post, Grit and Legal Education: Wall Street Journal, The Virtue of Hard Things (reviewing Angela Duckworth (University of Pennsylvania), Grit: The Power of Passion and Perseverance (May 3, 2016)):
Most people would think of John Irving as a gifted wordsmith. He is the author of best-selling novels celebrated for their Dickensian plots, including "The Cider House Rules" and "The World According to Garp." But Mr. Irving has severe dyslexia, was a C-minus English student in high school and scored 475 out of 800 on the SAT verbal test. How, then, did he have such a remarkably successful career as a writer?
Angela Duckworth argues that the answer is "grit," which she defines as a combination of passion and perseverance in the pursuit of a long-term goal. The author, a psychology professor at the University of Pennsylvania, has spent the past decade studying why some people have extraordinary success and others do not. "Grit" is a fascinating tour of the psychological research on success and also tells the stories of many gritty exemplars, from New Yorker cartoon editor Bob Mankoff, who submitted some 2,000 drawings to the magazine before one was accepted, to actor Will Smith, who explains his success as follows: "The only thing that I see that is distinctly different about me is: I'm not afraid to die on a treadmill. . . . If we get on the treadmill together, there's two things: You're getting off first, or I'm going to die."
May 10, 2016 in Book Club, Legal Education | Permalink | Comments (1)
Lenders To Ivy League Student Borrowers Face Unanticipated Risk: Prepayments
Wall Street Journal, Lenders Get Burned Betting on Ivy Leaguers:
For online lenders, the business model of targeting Ivy League student borrowers is starting to backfire.
The problem isn't that graduates of these and other prestigious universities are deadbeats. Rather, these customers, who the lenders covet for their superlow default rates, are proving savvier and more anti-debt than anticipated.
Borrowers are prepaying their student loans at a quicker pace—in some cases three times faster—than some companies expected, a potentially bad outcome for the lenders and investors that wanted to collect higher interest payments over time, according to people familiar with the industry. Not only are customers aggressive about refinancing at lower rates, some are paying more than required each month in an attempt to get rid of their debt faster. ...
May 10, 2016 in Legal Education | Permalink | Comments (7)
Massachusetts Property Tax Battle Asks: Who Defines Religion In America?
The Atlantic, Should Courts Get to Define Religion?:
Property-tax battles are rarely sexy. But a case now in front of the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court, about whether the 21 religious brothers and sisters who run the Shrine of Our Lady of LaSalette in Attleboro should have to pay taxes, could have huge repercussions. The Court's decision will be an important part of the ongoing debate in America about who defines religious practice—believers or bureaucrats—and whether religion itself should be afforded a special place under the law.
The case centers on a colonial-era law in Massachusetts that exempts religious houses of worship and parsonages from property taxes if they are used for religious worship or instruction. The shrine has enjoyed this perk since its founding in 1953. But in recent years, the City of Attleboro, nestled between Providence and Boston, has faced a tightening budget. It began looking to see where it could collect more revenue. The shrine, the only major tourist attraction in town, was an obvious target for tax collectors.
May 10, 2016 in Tax | Permalink | Comments (1)
McGinnis: Despite Schadenfreude, Don't Tax University Endowments
John McGinnis (Northwestern), Don't Tax University Endowments (Even if It Might Seem Like Rough Justice):
It is hard to suppress schadenfreude as legislators offer proposals to tax the endowments of our elite universities. Their administrators and professors are overwhelmingly Democratic—indeed left-liberal Democrats. They regularly support candidates who want to raise taxes on for-profit corporations and individuals.
May 10, 2016 in Legal Education | Permalink | Comments (2)
The Tax Strategy Behind Google's Alphabet Reorganization
Bret N. Bogenschneider (Vienna) & Ruth Heilmeier (Cologne), Google's 'Alphabet Soup' in Delaware, 16 Hous. Bus. & Tax J. 1 (2016):
In this article the tax avoidance planning of Google's "Alphabet" Delaware reorganization is explored in detail. The recent Google reorganization created an IP parent holding company in Delaware ("Alphabet") yielding potential state corporate income tax avoidance benefits, including: (1) incremental royalty expense deductions in non-combined reporting states; (2) potential exclusion of foreign royalty income from the tax base in combined reporting states; (3) creation of a constitutional challenge to the taxation of foreign royalty income of Alphabet; and (4) domestic IP license benchmark for foreign affiliates to allow for repatriation of offshore cash by higher royalty payments.
May 10, 2016 in Scholarship, Tax | Permalink | Comments (1)
Bill Would Allow Tax Deduction For HOA Dues Akin To Property Taxes
Washington Post, Bill Would Offer Tax Break for Some Homeowner Association Payments:
They are a giant presence in American real estate, but they get short shrift in the federal tax code: the estimated 340,000 communities across the country that are governed by homeowner associations and are often subject to a form of double taxation.
Upward of 67 million people live in these communities, which range from sprawling, master-planned subdivisions to individual condominium or cooperative developments. As of 2014, they contained nearly 27 million housing units. Their homeowner associations often provide the functional equivalents of municipal and county services, and residents nationwide pay roughly $70 billion a year in regular assessments to fund road paving and maintenance, snow removal, trash collection, storm water management, maintenance of recreational and park facilities, and much more.
The same residents also pay local property taxes to municipal, county or state governments. But only their local property tax levies are deductible on federal tax filings while the community association assessments that pay for government-type services are not.
May 10, 2016 in Tax | Permalink | Comments (1)
Call For Papers For AALS Annual Meeting Program: Sex, Death, And Taxes
Call for Papers: AALS Trusts & Estates Section Program, 2007 AALS Annual Meeting (Jan. 3-7, 2017):
Sex, Death, and Taxes: The Unruly Nature of the Laws of Trusts and Estates
Trusts & Estates is a far-reaching and broad-based discipline of law that impacts private citizens' decisions about sex, death, and taxes. This legal discipline is based on speculation about donors and their intentions that, by their very nature, create unintended consequences because the laws exist largely unseen until they come into play. Moreover, ascertaining these preferences prove difficult because individuals are entrenched with idiosyncratic preconceptions about death, family, property rights, personal legacies, paternalism, altruism, investment strategies, taxes, and many other effective interests. In addition, the field sits at the crossroads of other legal disciplines such as family law, property law, elder law, and tax law.
May 10, 2016 in Legal Education, Tax | Permalink | Comments (0)
2015-16 Moot Court Rankings
1. Texas Tech
2. Chicago-Kent
2. Stetson
4. Georgetown
5. Regent
7. South Texas
7. UC-Hastings
9. Liberty
10. St. Mary's
May 10, 2016 in Law School Rankings, Legal Education | Permalink | Comments (2)
NY Times: The Treasury Department's Never-Ending Fight To Combat Tax Cheats
New York Times Deal Book: Treasury Dept.'s Never-Ending Fight to Combat Tax Cheats, by Peter J. Henning (Wayne State):
In the wake of the disclosure of confidential documents known as the Panama Papers showing how lawyers set up shell companies to hide assets, the White House announced initiatives last week to combat "shady practices" used by "corrupt officials, tax cheats, and other criminals."
Like other well-intentioned steps to fight corruption, they will make it a little bit harder to shift money around anonymously, but ultimately will be only a modest impediment to stanching the flood of illicit funds that course through the economy. ...
May 10, 2016 in Tax | Permalink | Comments (1)
Mankiw: Presidential Campaign Tax Myths
New York Times op-ed: The Economy Is Rigged, and Other Presidential Campaign Myths, by N. Gregory Mankiw (Harvard):
If you want to learn about the economy, there are good and bad places to go. Probably the worst source of reliable information is the current crop of presidential candidates. Dissembling and exaggeration are no strangers to politics, but this year's campaigns have been particularly egregious.
Here are six economic myths that underlie much of the recent rhetoric. ...
[4.] The rich don't pay much in taxes.
In an era of great inequality, it is natural for politicians to demonize the rich. And some top earners don't pay enough in taxes, such as the hedge fund and private equity crowd that benefits from the tax treatment of carried interest.
But don't confuse these exceptions, even if they are glaring ones, with the general rule. The Congressional Budget Office estimates that under the 2013 tax law, which is still in effect today, the top 1 percent pays 33 percent of its income in federal taxes. By contrast, the middle class (defined here as the middle three-fifths of the income distribution) pays only 13 percent of its income in federal taxes.
[5.] Tax cuts will unleash stupendous growth.
May 10, 2016 | Permalink | Comments (5)
Law Student Says He Was Almost Expelled From BYU For Writing Book In Favor Of Gay Marriage
Following up on my previous posts:
- Group Files Complaint With ABA Alleging Discrimination By BYU Law School Against LGTB, Ex-Mormon Students
- ABA Continues Inquiry Into BYU Law School's Expulsion Of Ex-Mormon Students
Fusion, Law Student Says He Was Almost Expelled for Writing in Favor of Gay Marriage:
In the middle of his final year at Brigham Young University's J. Reuben Clark Law School, Brad Levin finally finished a draft of what he hoped would be a game-changing book on the university owned by the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints: Homosexuality: A Straight BYU Student's Perspective. In the book, Levin laid out why same-sex marriage was not, according to his research, at odds with the church's teachings. Proud of his work, he shared a few copies with friends for some feedback.
But when the feedback came, it wasn't the kind he had been hoping for.
"I was basically threatened with removal from the university if I went forward and took a public stance in favor of gay marriage," Levin, 33, told Fusion, citing conversations he said he had with senior school officials. "I was told that I had to change the contents of my book to be on the right side of the church."
May 10, 2016 in Book Club, Legal Education | Permalink | Comments (0)
The IRS Scandal, Day 1097
New York Post editorial, Facebook's Faked 'Trending News' Is a Warning Not to Trust Silicon Valley:
Well, so much for Facebook's claims to be an honest information broker: Turns out its list of "trending" topics comes with a hefty political bias.
The site Gizmodo on Monday reported what it had heard from some of the "news curators" who actually create the "trending" feed — which only starts with topics flagged by a computer algorithm as to what users are actually posting about.
The exposé reveals one level of bias imposed by management — and another from the peons hired to do the work.
Several curators cited routine nixing of right-of-center topics — news about Mitt Romney, Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker and even Lois Lerner, the face of the IRS scandal.
Ironic: IRS employees used their power to suppress righty speech, and Facebook then suppressed the fact its users cared about it . . .
- The Daily Signal, Facebook's War on Conservative News
- Legal Insurrection, Former Facebook Employees Claim Website Snuffed Conservative News
- New York Magazine, What It Really Means That Facebook 'Suppressed' Conservative News
May 10, 2016 in IRS News, IRS Scandal, Tax | Permalink | Comments (0)
Monday, May 9, 2016
Incentivizing And Assessing Law Faculty Committee Work Contributions
Andrea Anne Curcio (Georgia State) & Mary A. Lynch (Albany), Incentivizing and Assessing Faculty Committee Work Contributions: Why Now?, 65 J. Legal Educ. ___ (2016):
Faculty scholarly productivity reaps tangible internal and external rewards while the "reward" for excellent faculty committee work performance often is additional committee work. Some faculty members perform substantial committee work while others spend little time on institutional service, leaving them more time for scholarship. Despite equity issues, this system maintains the faculty self-governance model integral to academic freedom, and the necessary service work gets done. This article suggests that this traditional workload distribution model may be unsustainable.
Innovations in legal education brought about by financial pressures, declining enrollments, and new accreditation standard requirements will result in increased committee workloads while reductions in full-time faculty at many schools leave fewer faculty members available to do that work. Those currently doing the lion's share of the work may be unable, or unwilling, to take on more committee work. This article examines methods for avoiding an institutional governance crisis.
May 9, 2016 in Legal Education, Scholarship | Permalink | Comments (0)
Law Review Rankings By Supreme Court Citations: 2013-2016
Empirical SCOTUS, Gold Standard Cites:
Publications and citations are essential to the research academic. They help separate experts from novices in a given field. They provide metrics for universities to gauge the quality of their professors' scholarship. In legal scholarship there is a particularly meaningful measure that distinguishes law from other disciplines: citations in published opinions. Supreme Court citations to law reviews convey the importance of an article to a particular area of law.
Articles by Sirico [The Citing of Law Reviews by the Supreme Court:1971-1999, 75 Ind. L.J. 1009 (2000)] and Newton [Law Review Scholarship in the Eyes of the Twenty-First Century Supreme Court Justices: An Empirical Analysis 2001-2011, 4 Drexel L. Rev. 399 (2012)] previously tracked these citations over different periods of time in the 20th and 21st centuries.
1. Harvard (27 citations in 23 cases)
2. Yale (26,18)
3. Columbia (16,12)
4. Chicago (11,9)
6. Stanford (8,6)
7. Michigan (7,5)
7. Penn (7,7)
9. Georgetown (6,4)
9. Texas (6,5)
9. Texas (6,5)
May 9, 2016 in Law Review Rankings, Legal Education | Permalink | Comments (0)
Georgetown Graduate Tax Program Receives $1 Million Gift For Student Scholarships
Press Release, Georgetown Law, Baker & McKenzie Establish Leonard B. Terr Memorial Scholarship:
Georgetown Law, the law firm of Baker & McKenzie, and family and friends of the late Leonard B. Terr have established a $1 million scholarship to assist students in the graduate tax program. Terr, a Baker & McKenzie partner and Law Center adjunct professor, taught tax law at Georgetown for 17 years before his death in 2015.
May 9, 2016 in Legal Education, Tax | Permalink | Comments (1)
L.A. Jones Day Associate: 'Let's Do This Together'—In Law, Women Need To Help Other Women
Bloomberg Law op-ed: In Law, Women Need to Help Other Women, by Rachel Gezerseh (Associate, Jones Day, Los Angeles):
I've seen a lot of articles lately about the difficulties at large law firms with retaining female attorneys, the so-called "leaky pipeline" in Biglaw. To me, as a female associate at a large law firm, the solution is simple: women need to help other women. If you know another woman has your back, you stay. If you don't have that support, you leave. Also, giving back to other women when you can is important.
I have three stories on this from my life. ...
May 9, 2016 in Legal Education | Permalink | Comments (2)
WSJ: What Is Prince's Legacy Worth? The Tax Man Wants To Know.
Following up on my previous post, Prince Died Without A Will, According To Court Documents: Wall Street Journal, What Is Prince's Legacy Worth? The Tax Man Wants to Know:
After the doves cry, there's IRS Form 706.
Estate-tax attorneys for Prince, who died [April 21], must attempt to put a precise financial value on his name, image and likeness.
That Prince-ness could make him one of America's top-earning deceased celebrities, and it may be one of his estate's largest assets—subject to a 40% federal tax.
The Internal Revenue Service is used to putting price tags on tradeable assets and is well-trained in taking existing revenue streams and capitalizing them into a value. It is much trickier to divine the worth of a unique niche business—marketing Prince's legacy—that doesn't really exist yet.
May 9, 2016 in Celebrity Tax Lore, Tax | Permalink | Comments (0)
Harvard Law School Sees 50% Increase In STEM Majors After Accommodating Their Lower UGPAs In Admissions Decisions
Harvard Crimson, To Keep Pace with Tech, Law School Seeks STEM Students:
As Harvard Law School admissions officers finalize next year's class, they do so with an eye toward a group of fields that deviate from the traditional path to legal studies: STEM.
May 9, 2016 in Legal Education | Permalink | Comments (1)
LSAC Backs Down (For Now) On Threat To Expel University Of Arizona For Use Of GRE In Law School Admissions
Following up on my previous posts (links below): National Law Journal, Opposition to Arizona Law School's Use of GRE Fizzles:
The University of Arizona James E. Rogers College of Law will remain a member of the Law School Admission Council—for now.
The council, which administers the Law School Admission Test, informed Arizona law dean Marc Miller by letter Saturday that the Tucson law school will be allowed to remain in its membership ranks "for the time being."
The council's board of trustees at its meeting on Friday and Saturday discussed whether Arizona's use of the GRE in addition to the LSAT violated the council rule that requires "substantially all" applicants to members schools take the law school-specific test. ...
"We understand the Accreditation Committee of the ABA Section of Legal Education and Admissions to the Bar will review the GRE study and address the validity of the alternative tests as well as other issues related to [the ABA admissions standard]," the council's May 7 letter reads. "The resolution of these issues may well impact LSAC's membership requirements." Hence, the board decided to maintain the existing membership, the letter said.
May 9, 2016 in Legal Education | Permalink | Comments (3)
Taxing Carried Interest As Ordinary Income Through Executive Action
Following up on my previous post, Taxing Carried Interest As Ordinary Income Through Executive Action: New York Times: Ending Tax Break for Ultrawealthy May Not Take Act of Congress, by Gretchen Morgenson:
It's only natural that Barack Obama, entering the homestretch of his presidency, would be concerned about his legacy. Judging from a recent interview in The New York Times Magazine, getting credit for the actions he has taken on economic issues seems to be of special interest to him.
Mr. Obama expressed frustration that many middle-class Americans feel they've been left behind during his time in office. The wealthiest Americans, meanwhile, have become richer during the Obama years.
There is a lot about this problem of income inequality — and about the economy over all — that Mr. Obama cannot control. Still, there is something he could do right now to help narrow the widening gulf between rich and poor.
In one deft move, Mr. Obama could instruct officials at his Treasury Department to close the so-called carried interest tax loophole that allows managers of private equity and hedge funds to pay a substantially lower federal tax rate on much of their income.
Forcing these managers to pay ordinary income taxes on the gains they reap in their funds would accomplish two things. It would take away an enormous benefit enjoyed almost exclusively by some of the country's wealthiest people. And, tax experts say, it would generate billions in revenue to the government each year, though there are wide differences over exactly how much.
But doesn't changing the carried interest loophole require an act of Congress? Not according to an array of tax experts. Just as Mr. Obama's Treasury Department recently changed the rules to curb corporate inversions, in which companies shift their official headquarters to another country to lower their tax bills, the Treasury secretary, Jacob J. Lew, and his colleagues could jettison the carried interest loophole.
May 9, 2016 in Tax | Permalink | Comments (6)
NLJ Special Report: The Mental Health Of Law Students
National Law Journal, In Focus: The Mental Health of Law Students:
The numbers are disturbing: Law students suffer from depression, anxiety and substance abuse at unusually high rates. In our report about mental health on law campuses, we examine why law school exacerbates these problems and what administrators and fellow students can do to help. We also share first-person accounts of navigating law school with a mental health condition, from the student and faculty perspective.
May 9, 2016 in Legal Education | Permalink | Comments (0)
IRS Seeks Grant Applications for Funding for Low Income Taxpayer Clinics, Volunteer Tax Assistance Programs
The IRS has announced that it is accepting grant applications for Low Income Taxpayer Clinics (IR-2016-70) and Volunteer Tax Assistance Programs (IR-2016-71) for the 2017 grant cycle (Jan. 1 - Dec. 31, 2017).
Low Income Taxpayer Clinics
Applications will be accepted through June 20, 2016. The LITC program awards matching grants of up to $100,000 per year to qualifying organizations to develop, expand, or maintain a low income taxpayer clinic.
May 9, 2016 in IRS News, Tax | Permalink | Comments (0)
The IRS Scandal, Day 1096
Bloomberg BNA, Americans for Prosperity Shows That Rough and Tumble Issue Activism Could Serve as a Shield for Charities Against Donor Disclosures:
We all know the saying "politics ain't beanbag" – and the ranks of candidates for high office seem to be living by that adage. But in the last several years we have seen a significantly more confrontational style filter down to the grassroots issue activists behind any number of organizations and causes – threats to boycott stores (see Hobby Lobby Stores) or even entire states (North Carolina and not too long ago Georgia) over laws or stances taken; calls for individuals to be fired from their jobs or otherwise "economically disciplined" for expressing opinions deemed "unacceptable" (such as Brendan Eich's ouster from Mozilla for donating to the California Proposition 8 campaign after calls from activists or Atlanta Fire Chief Kelvin Cochran's dismissal for expressing his disapproval of same-sex marriage in a religious book he published); and even instances of physical altercations or harassment (picketing the homes of politicians' families, or attempting to physically disrupt events or attendees). Now we may see that style of politics become a tool by which charities and other exempt organizations challenge state-level disclosure requirements that would force them to disclose donor information. ...
Americans for Prosperity Foundation (AFP) won just such a challenge when Judge Manuel Real of the U.S. District Court for the Central District of California held California's requirement for charities to file annually with the Attorney General (AG) their unredacted Form 990 Schedule B (Schedule of Contributors) to be unconstitutional as applied to AFP. Judge Real permanently enjoined the AG from requiring or demanding AFP's Schedule B information.
The primary basis for the decision was extensive trial evidence of harassment and intimidation that supporters of AFP and those affiliated with it have experienced. Though Judge Real only recounted a few of the incidents established at trial, the details sound like much of the activism that is becoming more prevalent: An IT contractor took to social media to condemn AFP (and suggest that he could easily slit the throat of AFP's CEO) and was later found in the garage photographing license plates; protestors at an event cut down the tent being used for the function while attendees were still inside; major donors have received numerous death threats and had their business boycotted once their affiliation has become known; the Koch brothers, long-time supporters have been threatened, along with their families, including their grandchildren (who are all still minors). As Judge Real put it in conclusion, "the Court finds that AFP supporters have been subjected to abuses that warrant relief…." ...
In the end, Judge Real's opinion may work to open the floodgates for other organizations that have been targeted for various forms of harassment or abuse. Several states have either instituted, revived, or proposed requirements that charitable organizations file their Schedule B information with state officials. And while California has been the focal point of challenges, the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York has upheld a similar New York requirement against a facial challenge (see Citizens United v. Schneiderman). While the initial failure of those facial challenges may have dampened litigation at first, this new decision will certainly result in additional interest in litigating these disclosure requirements, even if it must be done on an organization-by-organization basis. For now, we can only wait and see what, if anything, the Ninth Circuit does on appeal.
May 9, 2016 in IRS News, IRS Scandal, Tax | Permalink | Comments (0)
TaxProf Blog Weekend Roundup
- This Week's Ten Most Popular TaxProf Blog Posts
- Galle: Section 305 And The Roosting Chickens Of The Chan-Zuckerberg Initiative
- ABA Tax Section May Meeting
- The Future Is 'Bleak' For Law Students And Law School Graduates
- The IRS Scandal, Day 1094
- Sagers: The Antitrust Implications Of LSAC's Threatened Expulsion Of University Of Arizona Over Use Of GRE In Law School Admissions
- TIGTA: IRS Mischaracterizes 88% Of Hobbies As For-Profit Businesses, Allowing Billions In Improper Loss Deductions
- The Top 5 Tax Paper Downloads
- New Decanal Appointments At Pepperdine Law School
- The IRS Scandal, Day 1095
May 9, 2016 in Legal Education, Tax, Weekend Roundup | Permalink | Comments (0)
Sunday, May 8, 2016
Sagers: The Antitrust Implications Of LSAC's Threatened Expulsion Of University Of Arizona Over Use Of GRE In Law School Admissions
Following up on my previous posts:
- The Empire Strikes Back: LSAC Threatens To Expel University Of Arizona Over Use Of GRE In Law School Admissions (May 1, 2016)
- 148 Deans Demand LSAC Rescind Threat To Expel University Of Arizona Over Use Of GRE In Law School Admissions (May 5, 2016)
TaxProf Blog op-ed: Did LSAC Just Get Itself In Antitrust Trouble? Could Be; It's Kind of Hard to Say, by Christopher L. Sagers (Cleveland State):
Here's a story of a kind that's been of acute interest to me, ever since my own absurdly dismal LSAT score nearly cost me entrance to any law school and unambiguously predicted I would flunk out of the one that grudgingly took me off its wait list. (That latter prediction was rather mistaken as it happens, thank you very much).
The Law School Admissions Council and its erstwhile member the University of Arizona College of Law got some headlines last week, and battle lines are forming quickly. LSAC ejected Arizona over its choice to permit applicants to submit GRE scores instead of LSAT scores. Arizona was the very first law school to do so, basing its decision on a study finding the GRE as predictive of first-year law school success as the LSAT. Dean Marc Miller said his goal is to "reach a broader pool of would-be applicants," in order "to put together the best and most diverse class we can." LSAC expulsion, he said, "seems like a pretty bald way to punish us for innovating."
LSAC's move looking rather like a collective act of its law school members to control the means by which they'll sell the legal education product, and the industry being one that has generated a fair bit of antitrust litigation, a natural question is whether the expulsion could expose anyone to antitrust risks. Critics quickly said as much; as one of them put it, "I'm no antitrust expert, but this rule smells bad."
May 8, 2016 in Legal Education | Permalink | Comments (1)
TIGTA: IRS Mischaracterizes 88% Of Hobbies As For-Profit Businesses, Allowing Billions In Improper Loss Deductions
The Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration has released Opportunities Exist to Identify and Examine Individual Taxpayers Who Deduct Potential Hobby Losses to Offset Other Income (2016-30-031):
The Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration (TIGTA) today publicly released its audit report of the Internal Revenue Service's (IRS) methods of addressing taxpayers who take business tax deductions for activities not engaged in for profit. TIGTA found that the IRS can improve its methods for identifying high-income taxpayers who may be offsetting their income with "hobby losses" from unprofitable business activity.
The tax code allows taxpayers to deduct all ordinary and necessary expenses paid or incurred in carrying on a trade or business. However, in the "hobby loss" provision in the tax code, the IRS generally disallows business tax deductions for activities not engaged in for profit.
May 8, 2016 in Gov't Reports, IRS News, Tax | Permalink | Comments (10)
The Top 5 Tax Paper Downloads
There is a bit of movement in this week's list of the Top 5 Recent Tax Paper Downloads, with a new paper debuting on the list at #5:
- [811 Downloads] Lexisnexis® Guide to FATCA Compliance: Chapter 1, by Willliam Byrnes (Texas A&M) & Robert J. Munro (Texas A&M)
- [342 Downloads] Ownership of the Means of Production, by E. Glen Weyl (Chicago) & Anthony Lee Zhang (Stanford)
- [307 Downloads] The Law of the Platform, by Orly Lobel (San Diego)
- [271 Downloads] The Panama Papers and Tax Morality, by Usman W. Chohan (University of New South Wales)
- [245 Downloads] Trust Protectors: Why They Have Become 'The Next Big Thing', by Lawrence Frolik (Pittsburgh)
May 8, 2016 in Scholarship, Tax, Top 5 Downloads | Permalink | Comments (0)
New Decanal Appointments At Pepperdine Law School
Continuing our season of change at Pepperdine: three of my favorite and stunningly effective and caring colleagues have assumed important new decanal duties at the law school:
- Al Sturgeon (Dean of Graduate Studies)
- Selina Brandt (Associate Dean for Academic Success and Employer Relations)
- Steven Schultz (Dean of Students)
May 8, 2016 in Legal Education | Permalink | Comments (0)
The IRS Scandal, Day 1095
Linda Beale (Wayne State), IRS Scrutiny of 501(c)(3)s:
As most everybody is aware by now, the IRS has been under considerable strain for a number of years from budget and staff reductions that have left it underfunded, understaffed, and under pressure. This is part of the right's effort to "shrink the government to a bathtub and drown it." If the main organization for helping Americans understand their tax obligations is understaffed, it is likely that many people will become irritated with the agency and blame it (and taxes) for all their problems. If the main organization for enforcing the U.S. tax laws fairly has too few people to audit the most likely scoflaws and too little money to prepare guidance and rulings to make it harder for scofflaws to scoff at the law, then many people will become irritated with the agency and blame it (and taxes) for their problems while many other people (especially the privileged rich) will continue to scoff at the law by overstating their basis when they sell capital assets, hiding assets in tax havens, and just hiring lots of expensive tax attorneys and accountants to come up with schemes for wiggling through the loopholes in the Code to avoid more taxes.
And of course, if the main organization for ensuring that tax-exempt organizations are not abusing their tax exempt status by using "dark money" to allow the domestic elite and foreign powers to influence and control federal elections and legislation, then odds are the rich and elite and foreign powers will wield more and more influence and control over who gets elected and what kind of legislation they pass. Odds are we will see even more of the kinds of absurd legislation disenfranchising the poor and minorities by making it harder to vote, harder to get a State-issued I.D. card, harder to wait in line for hours at the polls (if you will be fired for not reporting to work), etc.
None of this is any surprise.
None of it is good government.
All of it is supported by the current radicalized uber-right-wing Republican Party hacks that are running many state governments and hold the majority right now in the U.S. Senate and House of Representatives.
As the New York Times editorial board noted, "[c]laiming a 'social welfare' tax exemption has become a tool for powerful political operatives like Karl Rove, the Republican campaign guru. His Crossroads GPS group, which has 501(c) status, has spent $330 million on ads and candidates since it was created in 2010." See Editorial, Dark Money and an I.R.S. Blindfold, New York Times (Apr. 28, 2016). And of course, with all the ranting about it being a problem to pick a group with "Tea Party" or "Progressive" in their name for closer scrutiny (when any common sense analysis will tell you that such a group is quite likely to be engaged in forbidden lobbying activities), "the IRS has grown ever more gun-shy about enforcement."
So the latest bill wreaking havoc on democracy, put forward by Republican Peter Roskam in the House of Representatives, would eliminate the current law that requires those who donate more than $5000 to a nonprofit to be disclosed to the IRS (though redacted for public versions of organizations' tax forms).. See, e.g., Richard Rubin, House Republicans Seek to Block IRS Collection of Non-profit Donor Data, Morningstar, Apr. 28, 2016. That means a foreign corporation or a foreign sovereign power could contribute enormous sums to shape the legislative and regulatory regimes in our country, and there would be NO WAY TO POLICE THE PROBLEM.
Further, it is hard to understand why any donor to a tax-exempt organization should be entitled to anonymity. The organization is able to avoid paying any taxes on the funds received, and--especially under the current malevolent eye from Congress towards the IRS--the IRS is hamstrung in enforcing the law against political campaigning with 501(c)(3) funds. What we should do instead of allow complete anonymity and the power plays that encourages is the opposite: the name of every donor who gives anything more than some de minimis threshold amount to any tax-exempt organization should be publicly available, and the amount given should be publicly available. After all, if money is "speech", "speech" is supposed to be heard. Remember the old saying about the tree that fell in the forest and whether there would even be any sound if there were no eardrum available to hear it. That's certainly the case with speech. If giving money is a form of speech, than the gift and giver shouldn't be hidden under a bushel but should be broadcast far and wide for anyone who wants to know.
May 8, 2016 in IRS News, IRS Scandal, Tax | Permalink | Comments (6)
Saturday, May 7, 2016
This Week's Ten Most Popular TaxProf Blog Posts
- The Empire Strikes Back: LSAC Threatens To Expel University Of Arizona Over Use Of GRE In Law School Admissions
- 148 Deans Demand LSAC Rescind Threat To Expel University Of Arizona Over Use Of GRE In Law School Admissions
- Lazear: America's Coming Tax Increase
- After U.S. News Stopped Giving Full Weight To Law School-Funded Jobs, 52% Of Those Jobs Disappeared
- The 'New Normal': Number Of Americans Renouncing Their U.S. Citizenship Continues To Set Records
- WSJ: Is Taxing Harvard, Yale And Stanford The Answer To Rising College Costs?
- WSJ: Latest ABA Data Show Declining Job Prospects For Law School Graduates
- University Of Minnesota Study: Enhanced Individualized Feedback In One Core 1L Class Improves Student Performance In All Of Their Other Classes
- Harper: Recent ABA Jobs Data Show That Boom Times For Lawyers (And Law Schools) Are Not Around The Corner
- The Estate Tax Is Destroying The Environment
May 7, 2016 in About This Blog, Legal Education, Tax, Weekly Top 10 TaxProf Blog Posts | Permalink | Comments (0)
Galle: Section 305 And The Roosting Chickens Of The Chan-Zuckerberg Initiative
Brian Galle (Georgetown), Zuckerblogging, Part I:
Facebook this week informed its shareholders that it is planning to issue a stock dividend. Existing shareholders, including Zuckerberg, will receive two shares of a new class of non-voting common stock for each of their existing shares. Readers may recall that Facebook already has 2 classes of common stock, one providing each share with one vote, and a second (mostly held by Zuckerberg) providing much more voting power. The dividend raises both some interesting philanthropy issues as well as some interesting technical questions about Tax Code section 305 (if the idea of "interesting…section 305" is not an oxymoron).
May 7, 2016 in Tax | Permalink | Comments (0)
ABA Tax Section May Meeting
The ABA Tax Section May meeting concludes today in Washington, D.C. The full program is here. Today's highlights are:
Pro Bono & Tax Clinics, Reflecting on Low Income Tax Clinics and Celebrating Professor Kathryn Sedo
This program will look back at low income tax clinics since their inception with a particular focus on retiring clinic Professor Kathryn Sedo of the University of Minnesota. Professor Sedo has been a part of the low income taxpayer community as one of the founders of one of the oldest clinics in the country. As she retires from her current position, we have the opportunity to look at the changes in the tax system as it relates to low income taxpayers over the course of her career and to look forward.
- Frank DiPietro (Minnesota) (moderator)
- Leslie Book (Villanova)
- Keith Fogg (Harvard)
- Peter Panuthos (Chief Special Trial Judge, U.S. Tax Court)
Posthumous Presentation, 2016 Distinguished Service Award Recipient Ken Gideon
The Section of Taxation is pleased to honor Kenneth W. ("Ken") Gideon as the recipient of its 2016 Distinguished Service Award in recognition for his distinguished career in recognition of his service to the profession, service to the government, and service to the Section.
The Distinguished Service Award is the highest honor awarded by the Section of Taxation. The Award is given to individuals who have had a distinguished career in taxation and "who have provided an aspirational standard for all tax lawyers to emulate." In the fall of last year, the Distinguished Service Award Committee unanimously selected Ken to be this year's recipient. As is the custom of the Committee, the plan was to inform Ken of the Award at the Council Dinner during the January meeting in Los Angeles. Ken passed away unexpectedly on January 10, 2016, two weeks before the Los Angeles meeting. [See Michael Graetz, Farewell To Ken Gideon.]
Other Tax Profs with speaking roles today include:
May 7, 2016 in ABA Tax Section, Conferences, Tax | Permalink | Comments (0)


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The Fearful Rise of Markets: Global Bubbles, Synchronized Meltdowns, and How To Prevent Them in the Future Hardcover – Apr 16 2010
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Product Description
As seen on C-Span Book TV, CNBC Street Signs, and in the Financial T imes , The Wall Street Journal, Forbes, The Motley Fool and The Globe and Mail .
" Authers has the curriculum vitae and the confidence to go where no other author has thus far been . His goal … is to make understandable why financial markets failed, how investors should protect themselves and what national authorities should do to correct some of the problems. His mission is happily met." - Financial Times
Carmen M Reinhart, co-author with Kenneth S Rogoff of 'This Time is Different: Eight Centuries of Financial Folly'
"This new book is a must-read for every investor....I'd urge anyone with any interest in investing to read it as soon as possible. It may well stop you losing your shirt in the next meltdown!" Cliff D'Arcy, The Motley Fool
From the Back Cover
"This enjoyable, fast-moving book is concise, relevant, and perceptive. My bottom line is a simple one: This book should be read by all those interested in the way markets operate, be they investors, analysts, or policy makers.
From the Foreword byMohamed A. El-Erian, CEO and co-CIO of PIMCO, and author ofWhen Markets Collide
"This book is a must-read for anyone concerned about how we can avoid recurring debt-induced busts in the years ahead, or anyone who wonders how to invest if (when!) the crisis returns. Authers' insights on the global financial crisis are profound.
Robert D. Arnott, Chairman, Research Affiliates, LLC, and author ofThe Fundamental Index: A Better Way to Invest
"This book illustrates the dangers to investors who fail to recognize that global asset markets have become more synchronized over time. In a crowded field of works on the financial crisis, Authers' work is unique in both its insight and style.
Robert R. Johnson, Ph.D., CFA, Senior Managing Director of the CFA Institute
"John Authers has combined his journalistically honed FT skills with great insights. Serious investors and policymakers should read this book.
David R. Kotok, Chairman and Chief Investment Officer of Cumberland Advisors
"John masterfully drives a stake through the myth of global economic decoupling one chapter and example at a time. A must-read in today's economy.
Vitaliy Katsenelson, Director of Research at Investment Management Associates, Inc, author ofActive Value Investing: Making Money in Range-Bound Markets
Are we barreling toward another massive global financial catastrophe?
How can so many bubbles form all at once? Why are so many "disconnected markets now capable of collapsing in unison? In this remarkably readable book, award-winningFinancial Timescolumnist John Authers takes on these critical questions and offers deeply sobering answers.
Authers reveals how the first truly global super bubble was inflated--and might now be inflating again. He illuminates the multiple roots of repeated financial crises: a massive shift in investing power from individuals to big institutions; the migration of key decisions from banks to capital markets; the wholesale financialization of many asset classes; and fundamental failures of both theory and policy.
The Fearful Rise of Marketspresents a truly global view, avoiding oversimplifications and ideology as it outlines how we got here and where we stand. Even more valuable, it offers realistic solutions--for decision-makers who want to prevent disaster and investors who want to survive it.
•The herd grows ever larger--and more dangerous
How institutional investing, indexing, and efficient markets theory promote herding
•Cheap money and irrational exuberance
Super fuel for super bubbles
•Too big to fail: the whole story of moral hazard
Banks, hedge funds, and beyond
•Danger signs of the next bubble
Forex, equity, credit, and commodity markets move once more in alignment
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews on Amazon.com (beta)
Without describing all two dozen chapters, here are some of the topics (besides indexing) the book addresses: How money markets disintermediated banks, the role of junk bonds, the "oil standard," carry trades and their effects, the impact of increasingly professionally dominated investment markets (e.g., herd behavior and "closet indexing"), reflexive markets, the limits of diversification, quant trading, and modern-day bank runs.
The author's analysis is pretty good, actually, and given some of the prominent theoreticians and practitioners he consulted in preparing the articles (sorry, chapters) in this book, that's understandable. People like Robert Arnott, Benoit Mandelbrot, Michael Mauboussin and Jeremy Siegel, for example. These guys have written some very interesting material on market behavior. (Two of my favorites are Mandelbrot's "The Misbehavior of Markets" and Mauboussin's "Think Twice.")
In short, you could read this book is just a few sittings, or you could digest one or two chapters at a time if you are pushed for time. Either way, it covers a lot of ground, can be easily understood by most readers, and delivers some important analysis. If you are looking for a good summary of many of the important developments in markets over recent decades (with an emphasis on the last 10 years and the recent market turmoil), I'd say this is a very fine choice.
Authers posits that there have been a number of factors that have made financial markets more volatile since the late 1990s until today (as opposed to the end of World War 2 until the late 1980s). The most important of these have been greater accumulation of financial resources into the hands of "financial professionals (i.e., fund managers)" as to individual investors (after world war 2, for example, over 90% of investment funds were held by individual investors as opposed to fund managers - today the figure is more like a third), the accumulation of wealth into focal points consisting of index funds, the rise of money markets, the oil replacing the gold standard, the rise of emerging markets, the rise of junk funds, foreign exchange rising as another "asset", the rise of the carry trade, increasing bank concentration, the rise of hedge funds, the rise of the BRICs and commodities as another investment asset. Each of these is discussed in terms the layman can understand.
The accumulation of the financial assets has facilitated herd behavior and hence has increased cyclicality. The rise of index funds has caused financial assets to become more concentrated around focal points such as S&P 500 stocks hence decreasing diversity in investment funds. In addition, the rise of these funds has further lead to herd behavior as it forces the fund managers to compete primarily on benchmarks relative to each other. This, according to Authers, leads to more "herd" behavior as any deviation from fund returns from the benchmark norm leads to fund manager unemployment. Money market funds have lead to more market risk as they are not guaranteed and, even worse, portray an image of being so. Emerging funds have lead to more investment in more volatile and cyclical economies. Junk funds have also lead to more investment in similarly characterized markets. Foreign exchange and commodity investment opportunities have also lead to investment funds entering a very volatile investment class. Increasing banking concentration has lead to moral hazard in that banks have become large enough to not be permitted by the government to fail. Hence they, too, can take more risk than would otherwise be prudent. In addition, all asset classes have become more closely correlated with each other. This makes diversification much more difficult if not impossible. In short, risk today in financial markets is considerably greater than it has been for most of the Post War period. Even worse, many of the traditional risk reduction strategies such as portfolio diversification are not as effective as they once were due to greater correlation among asset classes. All and all, risk today is much higher than it has been with investors being less able to mitigate it.
The book is slightly weak in the areas in its recommendations regarding how to prevent or mitigate future meltdowns. This is of some importance as the book's full title is "The Fearful Rise of Markets: Global Bubbles, Synchronized Meltdowns, and How to Prevent them in the Future". This is the reason this reviewers gives this book only 4 stars instead of 5. Some of Auther's ideas are quite good. For example, he recommends that banks should be forced to hold some proportion of housing CDOs they sell. This would lead, in his opinion, to an improvement in the quality of these products in the markets. Most of Auther's other ideas, however, do not seem practically feasible. For example, increasing bank reserves would lead an outflow of capital from those banks and nations with the higher capital requirements to those with lower. For a more comprehensive discussion of mitigation strategies, this reviewer recommends "Reforming U.S. Financial Markets: Reflections Before and Beyond Dodd-Frank (Alvin Hansen Symposium on Public Policy at Harvard University)". This contains a transcript of discussions held amongst leading academicians on the topic (i.e., Schiller).
Hence the reader comes out after reading the book, very justifiably, with the view that we now (and in the future) will be facing much greater market risk with little in the way of mitigation strategies. The message for the investor is clear: a greater share of one's investment portfolio in relatively lower risk and lower yielding investments such as high grade bonds.
This is a highly detailed yet simple read which provides a look at our past and current global market structures and the forces that move them. If you wish to review or, for the first time, effortlessly understand the actual market forces from a holistic point of view (currency, government finance, monetary policy, financial engineering, foreign markets, investor sentiment/confidence, etc) with concrete examples from recent history (depression, post WW and the impact of indexing and institutional investing), I recommend Authers work.
To shorten my own review, I recommend reading the review by AdamSmythe's as he has summarized the book well. I personally do not see this book as another book on "current crisis" as much as it is a detailed historical account of where the global markets are today, how they are connected more than ever and, finally, how we arrived at the current, if not historic, market conditions of 2010.
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