Monday, April 30, 2012

A Questionable Health Tax Proposal

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Earlier this month, the Institute of Medicine of the National Academies released the third in a series of reports on the state of public h...
Friday, April 27, 2012

The Disadvantages of Tax Incentives

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A recent case provides good insight into the disadvantages of using the tax law in an effort to encourage or discourage particular economic ...
Wednesday, April 25, 2012

Trust and Taxes

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Perhaps there is another element in the raging debate about taxes. Perhaps the disagreement has less to do with how much a government collec...
Monday, April 23, 2012

If the IRS Can’t Get It Right, Is It Any Wonder Taxpayers Struggle?

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A recent discussion on the ABA-TAX listserve ultimately revealed a rather disturbing error in an IRS audit guide. The issue involves the co...
Friday, April 20, 2012

Another Bad Tax Return Clutter Idea

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It’s bad enough that federal income tax returns are bloated with multiple forms, and that most forms are crammed with dozens of lines of inf...
Wednesday, April 18, 2012

Are State Tax Incentives Worth It?

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The Pew Center on the States has released a report on the effectiveness of state tax incentives. The report, titled “Evidence Counts: Eval...
Monday, April 16, 2012

Taxes and Safety

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An unfortunate fatal fire in Philadelphia has focused attention on the double whammy of absentee property owners who are derelict both in me...
Friday, April 13, 2012

Taxes, Audits, and the GHWG

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The Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse (TRAC) has released a new study of IRS Global High Wealth Group (GHWG) audits . The GHWG was...
Wednesday, April 11, 2012

S Corporation Stock Basis, Contrived Income, and Unclaimed Losses

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Recently, in Barnes v. Comr., , T.C. Memo. 2012-80, the Tax Court addressed two interesting questions concerning the basis of stock in an S ...
Monday, April 09, 2012

Zap the Tax Zappers

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According to a flurry of recent reports, including, for example, this one , an increasing number of state governments are looking for ways t...
Friday, April 06, 2012

Another Reason This Tax Should Die

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The Philadelphia real property tax system, riddled with flaws, inefficiencies, and injustice, has provided yet another reason that it needs ...
Wednesday, April 04, 2012

What Type of Tax Is Best for School Funding?

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The debate over the type of tax best for funding public education has been underway for decades. In most jurisdictions, the revenue is gener...
Monday, April 02, 2012

Cheating, Taxes, and Shame

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About a month ago, in Taxes, Citizenship, and Shame , I reflected on the effectiveness of publishing the names of tax scofflaws, noting “We ...
Friday, March 30, 2012

When Tax Credits Aren’t Worth the Trouble

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It’s no secret that I disagree with those who use the tax law to accomplish indirectly what should be handled directly by government agencie...
Wednesday, March 28, 2012

Taxes as to Sports or Sports as to Taxes?

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It is not uncommon for me to use a sports analogy when teaching tax law to illustrate, emphasize, or clarify a point. I’m not the only tax p...
Monday, March 26, 2012

The Bad Tax System That Will Not Die Might Get Another Lease on Life

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There is another chapter in the continuing and almost eternal story about Philadelphia’s attempts to fix its broken property tax system. My ...
Friday, March 23, 2012

Does the New York Sales Tax Discourage Suit Purchases?

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Recently, as explained in New York State Sales Tax Technical Memorandum TSB-M-12(3)S , the New York sales tax exemption for clothing and foo...
Wednesday, March 21, 2012

Reduced Legal Education Does Not Guarantee Better Preparation for Law Practice

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The rapidly growing legal education crisis (which I explored seven years ago in The Future of Legal Education and Law Faculty Activities ) h...
Monday, March 19, 2012

REPOST: Sorry I Wrote

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[Reposted from January 2005 because it no longer appears in the monthly archive because of blogspot page length restrictions] Time to wander...