Monday, January 31, 2011

Judge Judy and Tax Law Part II

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About ten days ago, in Judge Judy and Tax Law , I shared my reaction to a Judge Judy episode in which tax consequences played a tangential r...
Friday, January 28, 2011

Taxes and Gambling

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Several days ago, the Tax Court overruled one of its existing decisions, and in Mayo v. Comr. , 136 T.C. No. 4 (Jan. 25, 2011), held that th...
Wednesday, January 26, 2011

Traffic and Taxes

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Several days ago, the headline of a Philadelphia Inquirer article caught my eye. It stated, simply, “Philly-area traffic not so bad, study ...
Monday, January 24, 2011

Paying Interest Alone Does Not Foreclose Treasury Default

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Two weeks ago, in Cutting Taxes + Failing to Identify and Enact Spending Cuts = Default? , I concluded: The consequences of a default by th...
Friday, January 21, 2011

Judge Judy and Tax Law

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On Tuesday, while getting ready for dinner, I happened upon Judge Judy’s television courtroom show. The litigants were a divorced couple. Th...
Wednesday, January 19, 2011

The Price of Insufficient Tax Revenue

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A little more than a year ago, in New Jersey to Follow in California’s Tax Footsteps? , I asked this of now governor, then governor-elect, C...
Monday, January 17, 2011

A Whole New Take on Death and Taxes

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The title of the post on Paul Caron’s TaxProf Blog froze my eyeballs in their tracks. It simply said, Pay Your Taxes or We’ll Kill Your Dog...
Friday, January 14, 2011

Julian Block Talks Tax with Married, Divorced, and Other Couples

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To be precise, Julian Block isn’t so much talking with the married and divorce, but sharing explanations of pretty much every sort of issue ...
Wednesday, January 12, 2011

So Who Should Disclose What to Law School Applicants?

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A reader directed my attention to a New York Times article analyzing the economics of attending law school, and to a response to the story ...
Monday, January 10, 2011

Cutting Taxes + Failing to Identify and Enact Spending Cuts = Default?

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It appears that the collision between the refusal to raise taxes and the inability to cut spending is going to happen sooner than I had anti...
Friday, January 07, 2011

Statutory Language and Common Sense

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Though I stopped teaching Decedents’ Estates and Trusts in 2009 after 13 years of teaching the course as a “temporary” fill-in on an “emerge...
Wednesday, January 05, 2011

Financing the FICA Tax Rate Cuts

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Almost a month ago, in Why the Tax Compromise is a Mistake , I described the reasons I opposed the tax compromise, including this concern: 4...
Monday, January 03, 2011

Sometimes Old Tax Law Really Is Irrelevant

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A recent Tax Court Summary Opinion, Bragg v. Comr. , illustrates the dangers of relying on cases decided under Internal Revenue Code provisi...
Friday, December 31, 2010

A Section 107 Puzzle: Is “A” Just “One” or “Any”?

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Several weeks ago, in Driscoll v. Comr. , 135 T.C. No. 27 (2010), the United States Tax Court, in a case of first impression, held that the ...
Wednesday, December 29, 2010

To Whom Should People Give Their Tax Cuts?

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According to this Yale Law School news release , two members of the Yale Law faculty and a member of the faculty at Cornell Law School have ...
Monday, December 27, 2010

Will the IRS someday Tell Us to Wait Even Longer?

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On Thursday, the IRS announced that certain taxpayers must wait until mid-February, and perhaps as late as the end of February, to file the...
Friday, December 24, 2010

Taxation of Social Security Benefits: Inexplicable Inconsistency and Hidden Tax Increases

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A few days ago, a reader of Joseph N. DiStefano’s PhillyDeal$ blog voiced his concern over the fact that social security benefits are taxed...