Law Commons^™

Law School News: Throw Out The Old Thinking 9-30-2019, Michael M. Bowden

Life of the Law School (1993- )

No abstract provided.

The Professor Anthony J. Santoro Business Law Lecture Series Presents Becoming A Valued Business Lawyer, Roger Williams University School Of Law, Michael M. Bowden

School of Law Conferences, Lectures & Events

No abstract provided.

Where Does One Begin To Describe A Professor Who Literally Changed Your Life?, Kelli Turner

Michigan Business & Entrepreneurial Law Review

A bit of background to set the stage, if you’ll indulge me. Growing up in West Bloomfield, Michigan, I was never overly ambitious, nor did I have any lofty academic goals. In particular, I never had any desire to go to law school or, for that matter, to become a lawyer. I come from a family of trial attorneys and it never interested me much. I was a numbers person and didn’t enjoy a lot of deep reading and essay writing (somewhat ironic as I’m writing this for a law journal). But when I started in public accounting and developed …

Income Tax Accounting Consistency: Eliminate Accrual And Depreciation, And Revamp The Tax Treatment Of Borrowing, Joseph M. Dodge

Joseph M Dodge

Abstract for

INCOME TAX ACCOUNTING CONSISTENCY: ELIMINATE ACCRUAL AND DEPRECIATION, AND REVAMP THE TAX TREATMENT OF BORROWING

Joseph M. Dodge

Professor Emeritus, Florida State University College of Law

The thesis is that inconsistent tax accounting rules undermine the individual income tax, and the best available move for improving it – given the unassailability of the realization principle - is to eliminate its accrual (and quasi-accrual) features. Specifically, the agenda is to eliminate tax accrual accounting in the conventional sense, revamp the tax treatment of borrowing to (inter alia) abolish the Crane doctrine, and eliminate depreciation deductions for indivisible productive assets. …

Controversies In Tax Law: A Matter Of Perspective (Introduction), Anthony C. Infanti

Book Chapters

This volume presents a new approach to today’s tax controversies, reflecting that debates about taxation often turn on the differing worldviews of the debate participants. For instance, a central tension in the academic tax literature — which is filtering into everyday discussions of tax law — exists between “mainstream” and “critical” tax theorists. This tension results from a clash of perspectives: Is taxation primarily a matter of social science or social justice? Should tax policy debates be grounded in economics or in critical race, feminist, queer, and other outsider perspectives?

To capture and interrogate what often seems like a chasm …

Contingent Purchase Price, Contingent Liabilities And Indemnities In Taxable Acquisitions (Slides), William M. Richardson, Robert H. Wellen

William & Mary Annual Tax Conference

No abstract provided.

Contingent Consideration, Contingent Liabilities And Indemnities In Acquisitions (Outline), Robert H. Wellen

William & Mary Annual Tax Conference

No abstract provided.

A Market For Tax Compliance, Walter E. Afield Iii

Walter E Afield III

It is becoming increasingly clear that, due to political realities and budgetary constraints, the IRS is going to have to attempt to enforce the tax laws by doing more with less. Current enforcement efforts have yielded a tax gap (i.e., the difference between the amount of taxes that should be paid and the amount that are collected) of roughly $450 billion annually. Faced with this task, one of the steps that the IRS has recently taken is to try to improve the quality in services performed by paid tax preparers, a group that historically has been subject to little IRS …

The Overlap Of Tax And Financial Aspects Of Real Estate Ventures, Bradley T. Borden

Bradley T. Borden

This article examines the effect partnership tax law has on financial aspects of real estate ventures. It introduces the relevance of the aggregate and entity views of tax partnerships (i.e., LLCs, LPs, and other partnerships) and demonstrates how those views can greatly affect financial projections for each of the members of a real estate venture. It also demonstrates how financial calculations can vary significantly depending upon how closely analysts track a tax partnership’s allocation method. Finally, the article serves as a primer for tax practitioners who are unfamiliar with the financial tools that are so prevalent in real estate analysis, …

Sub S Valuation: To Tax Effect, Or Not To Tax Effect, Is Not Really The Question, Glen M. Vogel

Glen M Vogel

There were approximately 4 million Subchapter S corporations in 2008, with around 7 million shareholders. Because these companies are not publicly traded, their valuation in estate tax matters, divorces, shareholder disputes and other cases can present difficult issues for courts. In particular, the impact on the valuation of these companies of their “pass-through” tax status has been controversial since 1999, with different courts adopting different solutions. This article explains the nature of the issue, and presents a financial model for understanding the differential impact of taxes on the values of S and C corporations. The paper analyzes key court decisions …

New York's Law Of Tax Malpractice Damages: Balanced Or Biased?, Jacob L. Todres

Jacob L. Todres

In this article Professor Todres focuses on two common elements of damages often incurred by plaintiffs who are the victims of negligently rendered incorrect tax advice—additional, avoidable taxes, and interest on underpaid taxes. Both of these types of damages appear not to be recoverable under current New York law that traces its roots to Alpert v. Shea Gould Climenko and Casey, 160 A.D.2d 67, 559 N.Y.S.2d 312 (1st Dept. 1990).

As to the non-recovery of additional taxes that could have been avoided with correct advice, Professor Todres argues that current New York law is incorrect. It is based upon Alpert, …

Accounting Methods, Keith Hennessy

William & Mary Annual Tax Conference

No abstract provided.

Keep Your Friends Close But Your Auditors Closer: Corporations Risk Waiver When Independent Auditors Request Work Product, Daniel Reach

Daniel Reach

In the current transparency-driven regulatory environment, corporations’ efforts at compliance are rife with uncertainty. The work product doctrine is a core safeguard of a lawyer’s work, which may contain sensitive information that corporations would not want disclosed to opposing parties. Meanwhile, independent auditors serve in a perilous capacity as they provide necessary services to their corporate clients while risking potentially adverse exposure of the information these clients and their counsel disclose to them. The work product doctrine is a time-honored and rule-driven protection that guards the mental impressions and work efforts of lawyers from discovery by opposing parties. Public accounting …

The Liability-Offset Theory Of Peracchi, Bradley T. Borden, Douglas L. Longhofer

Bradley T. Borden

Peracchi v. Commissioner is a lightning rod for commentators and the bane of students of corporate income tax. In short, the decision makes no sense because it grants the maker of a note a section 1012 basis in the note, violating a fundamental principle of income taxation. Nonetheless, the decision helped preserve a fundamental aspect of corporate taxation—the tax-free formation of and contributions to controlled corporations. Because of its unorthodox application of the section1012 basis rules, the Peracchi decision is the subject of severe criticism. Unfortunately, commentators who criticize Peracchi generally fail to offer an alternative that recognizes general income …

The Allure And Illusion Of Partners' Interests In A Partnership, Bradley T. Borden

Bradley T. Borden

Favorable tax treatment and management flexibility make tax partnerships very popular. For starters, tax partnerships, unlike tax corporations, are not subject to entity-level taxes. Partnership taxable income flows through to the partners, and the partners report their shares of partnership taxable income on their individual tax returns. Partnership tax allocation rules determine the partners’ shares of partnership taxable income. Those rules rely upon the alluring concept of partners’ interests in a partnership. It seems intuitive that partners would know their interests in a partnership and be able to allocate partnership taxable income accordingly. This Article illustrates, however, that the concept …

A Complete Property Right Amendment, John H. Ryskamp

ExpressO

The trend of the eminent domain reform and "Kelo plus" initiatives is toward a comprehensive Constitutional property right incorporating the elements of level of review, nature of government action, and extent of compensation. This article contains a draft amendment which reflects these concerns.

Financial Accounting And Corporate Behavior, David I. Walker

ExpressO

The power of financial accounting to shape corporate behavior is underappreciated. Positive accounting theory teaches that even cosmetic changes in reported earnings can affect share value, not because market participants are unable to see through such changes to the underlying fundamentals, but because of implicit or explicit contracts that are based on reported earnings and transaction costs. However, agency theory suggests that accounting choices and corporate responses to accounting standard changes will not necessarily be those that maximize share value. For a number of reasons, including the fact that executive compensation often is tied to reported earnings, managerial preferences for …

The Partnership: Preserving Capital Gains On Real Estate Investments, Charles E. Mcwilliams

ExpressO

This paper considers the use of partnerships as an effective tool for preserving capital gains on real estate investments. For tax purposes, the Internal Revenue Service generally treats a limited liability company as a partnership. This form of organization is widely used for real estate investments, and by taking a few simple precautions an LLC may ensure that any gain on its investments in undeveloped real property will be treated as capital gains. Such treatment may reduce the LLC’s tax costs substantially.

The Fifth Circuit developed a framework that has proven invaluable for analyzing the activity of the LLC to …

Give Me (And Let Me Sell) Credits: The Basics Of Historic Rehab And Land Preservation Credits

William & Mary Annual Tax Conference

No abstract provided.

Breaking The Bank: Revisiting Central Bank Of Denver After Enron And Sarbanes-Oxley, Celia Taylor

ExpressO

No abstract provided.

Estate Tax Repeal And The Budget Process, Karen C. Burke, Grayson M.P. Mccouch

University of San Diego Law and Economics Research Paper Series

This article examines the Bush Administration’s proposal, as part of its proposed fiscal year 2005 budget, to extend permanently the repeal of the federal estate tax. The article considers the budgetary impact of permanent estate tax repeal and discusses procedural impediments to use of the reconciliation process for permanent tax cuts. The article also notes the possibility of a durable compromise solution involving retention of the estate tax with lower rates and a higher exemption.

Does The Tax Law Discriminate Against The Majority Of American Children: The Downside Of Our Progressive Rate Structure And Unbalanced Incentives For Higher Education?, Lester B. Snyder

University of San Diego Law and Economics Research Paper Series

Our graduate income tax structure provides an incentive to shift income to lower-bracket family members. However, some parents have much more latitude to shift income to their children than do others. Income derived from services and private business-by far the majority of American income-is less favored than income derived from publicly traded securities. The rationale given for this discrimination is that parents in services or private business, as opposed to those in securities, do not actually part with control of their property. This article explores these tax broader (yet subtle) tax benefits and their impact on the majority of children …

Business Law Reform In The United States: Thinking Too Small?, Douglas C. Michael

Law Faculty Scholarly Articles

Dean Johan Henning presents the South African experience with business entity reform as one part of a coordinated whole. It included, for example, government funding for business, tax reforms, accounting and securities changes. Henning says that these reforms, though multi-faceted, had a uniform purpose: to use small business as an engine to improve the economy and to move “historically and socially disadvantaged groups” into the mainstream of the economy and the society.

These are noble goals and far reaching efforts, and a lot to ask of business entity reform. But because the South African experience was nonetheless successful by all …

The Case For Repealing The Corporate Alternative Minimum Tax, Terrence R. Chorvat, Michael S. Knoll

All Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Put-Call Parity And The Law, Michael S. Knoll

All Faculty Scholarship

A common literary theme is the conflict between appearance and reality. That conflict also frequently arises in the law, where it is usually cast as one between substance and form. Another discipline in which the conflict arises is finance, where it appears in the put-call parity theorem. That theorem states that given any three of the four following financial instruments--a riskless zero-coupon bond, a share of stock, a call option on the stock, and a put option on the stock--the fourth instrument can be replicated. Thus, the theorem implies that any financial position containing these assets can be constructed in …

Corporate Finance, Corporate Law And Finance Theory, Peter H. Huang, Michael S. Knoll

All Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Selected Current Developments In Financial Accounting And Reporting, David W. Larue

William & Mary Annual Tax Conference

No abstract provided.

A Brilliant Instance Of Flabby Thinking, Deborah A. Geier

Law Faculty Articles and Essays

This article provides a short history of the lower-of-cost-or-market rule.

Allocation Of Nonrecourse Liabilities: Irs Takes Two Steps Forward, One Back, J. D. Dell, Michael G. Frankel, Leslie H. Loffman, Sanford C. Presant, Blake D. Rubin

William & Mary Annual Tax Conference

No abstract provided.

Planning Opportunities Remain Under The Final Partnership Allocation Rules For Contributed Property, Michael G. Frankel, Leslie H. Loffman, Sanford C. Presant

William & Mary Annual Tax Conference

No abstract provided.