Accounting Law Commons^™

Present At The Creation: Reflections On The Early Years Of The National Association Of Corporate Directors, Lawrence J. Trautman

Lawrence J. Trautman Sr.

Effective corporate governance is critical to the productive operation of the global economy and preservation of our way of life. Excellent governance execution is also required to achieve economic growth and robust job creation in any country. In the United States, the premier director membership organization is the National Association of Corporate Directors (NACD). Since 1978, NACD plays a major role in fostering excellence in corporate governance in the United States and beyond.

The NACD has grown from a mere realization of the importance of corporate governance to become the only national membership organization created by and for corporate directors ...

Puerto Rico: America's Tax Haven Or Not, Jason Sampas

Jason Sampas

The United States' continually rising tax rates force wealthy individuals, businesses, and entrepreneurs to seek brilliant tax advisors for relief. Rather than spending endless hours searching for a loophole to reduce the high tax rates, they should avoid the United States tax system altogether and take advantage of significant tax benefits by moving to Puerto Rico. Puerto Rico is a United States possession, which is still part of the United States. However, Puerto Rican sourced income is exempt from United States taxation. Additionally, Puerto Rico recently passed aggressive tax legislation to lure wealthy Americans, and their businesses, to relocate. This ...

Puerto Rico: America's Tax Haven Or Not, Jason Sampas

Jason Sampas

The United States' continually rising tax rates force wealthy individuals, businesses, and entrepreneurs to seek brilliant tax advisors for relief. Rather than spending endless hours searching for a loophole to reduce the high tax rates, they should avoid the United States tax system altogether and take advantage of significant tax benefits by moving to Puerto Rico. Puerto Rico is a United States possession, which is still part of the United States. However, Puerto Rican sourced income is exempt from United States taxation. Additionally, Puerto Rico recently passed aggressive tax legislation to lure wealthy Americans, and their businesses, to relocate. This ...

Puerto Rico: America's Tax Haven Or Not, Jason Sampas

Jason Sampas

The United States' continually rising tax rates force wealthy individuals, businesses, and entrepreneurs to seek brilliant tax advisors for relief. Rather than spending endless hours searching for a loophole to reduce the high tax rates, they should avoid the United States tax system altogether and take advantage of significant tax benefits by moving to Puerto Rico. Puerto Rico is a United States possession, which is still part of the United States. However, Puerto Rican sourced income is exempt from United States taxation. Additionally, Puerto Rico recently passed aggressive tax legislation to lure wealthy Americans, and their businesses, to relocate. This ...

Puerto Rico: America's Tax Haven Or Not, Jason Sampas

Jason Sampas

The United States' continually rising tax rates force wealthy individuals, businesses, and entrepreneurs to seek brilliant tax advisors for relief. Rather than spending endless hours searching for a loophole to reduce the high tax rates, they should avoid the United States tax system altogether and take advantage of significant tax benefits by moving to Puerto Rico. Puerto Rico is a United States possession, which is still part of the United States. However, Puerto Rican sourced income is exempt from United States taxation. Additionally, Puerto Rico recently passed aggressive tax legislation to lure wealthy Americans, and their businesses, to relocate. This ...

Puerto Rico: America's Tax Haven Or Not, Jason Sampas

Jason Sampas

The United States' continually rising tax rates force wealthy individuals, businesses, and entrepreneurs to seek brilliant tax advisors for relief. Rather than spending endless hours searching for a loophole to reduce the high tax rates, they should avoid the United States tax system altogether and take advantage of significant tax benefits by moving to Puerto Rico. Puerto Rico is a United States possession, which is still part of the United States. However, Puerto Rican sourced income is exempt from United States taxation. Additionally, Puerto Rico recently passed aggressive tax legislation to lure wealthy Americans, and their businesses, to relocate. This ...

Puerto Rico: America's Tax Haven Or Not, Jason Sampas

Jason Sampas

The United States' continually rising tax rates force wealthy individuals, businesses, and entrepreneurs to seek brilliant tax advisors for relief. Rather than spending endless hours searching for a loophole to reduce the high tax rates, they should avoid the United States tax system altogether and take advantage of significant tax benefits by moving to Puerto Rico. Puerto Rico is a United States possession, which is still part of the United States. However, Puerto Rican sourced income is exempt from United States taxation. Additionally, Puerto Rico recently passed aggressive tax legislation to lure wealthy Americans, and their businesses, to relocate. This ...

Puerto Rico: America's Tax Haven Or Not, Jason Sampas

Jason Sampas

The United States' continually rising tax rates force wealthy individuals, businesses, and entrepreneurs to seek brilliant tax advisors for relief. Rather than spending endless hours searching for a loophole to reduce the high tax rates, they should avoid the United States tax system altogether and take advantage of significant tax benefits by moving to Puerto Rico. Puerto Rico is a United States possession, which is still part of the United States. However, Puerto Rican sourced income is exempt from United States taxation. Additionally, Puerto Rico recently passed aggressive tax legislation to lure wealthy Americans, and their businesses, to relocate. This ...

The New Leadership Paradigm In Today’S Financial System: Foreign And Domestic Banking, Valencia Tamir Johnson

Valencia T Johnson

This article discusses the important of new leadership paradigm in today’s financial system and the importance the growth of foreign banking and investment in the United States and abroad. The article provides approaches that would inspire and develop effective leadership within financial organizations (foreign and domestic banking activities among investments, competitiveness, and improving the financial industry).

Incentivizing Credit Rating Agencies Under The Issuer Pay Model Through A Mandatory Compensation Competition, Robert J. Rhee

Faculty Scholarship

Credit rating agencies are important institutions of the global capital markets. If they had performed properly, the financial crisis of 2008-2009 would not have occurred. This article offers the simplest fix proposed thus far, and it is contrarian. This Article accepts the central role of rating agencies in the regulation of bond investments, the realities of a duopoly, and the issuer-pay model of compensation. The status quo is the baseline. The role of regulation should be to create the conditions necessary to induce competition. This article proposes that a small, recurring portion of revenue earned by the largest rating agencies ...

Revitalizing The Estate Tax: 5 Easy Pieces, James R. Repetti, Paul L. Caron

Boston College Law School Faculty Papers

In a previous article, we argued that contrary to the state of the law over 35 years ago — when George Cooper wrote his seminal article on the estate tax (A Voluntary Tax? New Perspectives on Sophisticated Estate Tax Avoidance, 77 Colum. L. Rev. 161 (1977))—taxpayers today generally ‘‘can reduce the value of assets subject to transfer tax in many instances only if they are willing to assume the risk that the reduction may be economically real and reduce the actual value of assets transferred to heirs or, alternatively, in narrow situations if they are willing to incur some tax ...

Culture Wars: Rate Manipulation, Institutional Corruption, And The Lost Normative Foundations Of Market Conduct Regulation, Justin O'Brien

Seattle University Law Review

The global investigations into the manipulation of the London Interbank Offered Rate (Libor) have raised significant questions about how conflicts of interest are managed for regulated entities contributing to benchmarks. An alternative framework, which brings the management of the rate process under direct regulatory supervision, is under consideration, coordinated by the International Organization of Securities Commissions taskforce. The articulation of global principles builds on a review commissioned by the British government that suggests rates calculated by submission can be reformed. This paper argues that this approach is predestined to fail, precisely because it ignores the lessons of history. In revisiting ...

The Timing And Source Of Regulation, Frank Partnoy

Seattle University Law Review

The distinction between specific concrete rules and general abstract principles has engaged legal theorists for decades. This rules–principles distinction has also become increasingly important in corporate and securities law, as well as financial market regulation. This Article adds two important variables to the rules–principles debate: timing and source. Although these two variables are relevant to legal theory generally, the specific goal here is not to address and engage the rules versus principles literature directly. Rather, the goal here is to ask whether the debate about financial market regulation might benefit from a more transparent analysis of temporal and ...

Deferred Prosecutions In The Corporate Sector: Lessons From Libor, Justin O'Brien, Olivia Dixon

Seattle University Law Review

Since 2008, the global economic downturn has significantly in-creased operating pressures on major corporations. Additionally, there has been a corresponding increase in corporate tolerance for corruption, which has coincided with a marked preference by regulators in settling, rather than litigating, enforcement actions. This Article argues that the expansion of prosecutorial authority without appropriate accountability restraints is a major tactical and strategic error. It evaluates whether the mechanism can be made subject to effective oversight. It argues that the current frame-work in the United States is highly problematic, leading to settlements that generate newspaper headlines but not necessarily cultural change. It ...

Are Defined Contribution Pension Plans Fit For Purpose In Retirement?, Jeremy R. Cooper

Seattle University Law Review

This Article considers the historical basis for the shift from defined benefit plans to defined contribution plans, the structural and practical shortcomings of defined contribution plans, alternate pension models, and adjustments to existing retirement plan models that may offer a degree of protection to plan contributors. Like the United States, Australia is now realizing the limitations of a defined contribution retirement system insofar as it relates the provision of reliable retirement income for a population with increasing life expectancy. Unlike defined contribution plans, defined benefit plans provide a benefit based typically on time served and a predetermined proportion of either ...

Australia’S Experience With Foreign Direct Investment By State Controlled Entities: A Move Towards Xenophobia Or Greater Openness?, Greg Golding

Seattle University Law Review

Over the last few years, there has been considerable debate in Australia as to the appropriate regulation of foreign direct investment by entities affiliated with foreign governments. During that time, Australia has been a significant beneficiary of investment by sovereign wealth funds from many foreign jurisdictions, particularly by Chinese state owned enterprises. The Australian government, similar to governments of many developed Western countries, has struggled to properly calibrate its policy settings for regulating this type of investment activity. This Article considers the Australian regulatory regime and assesses Australia’s experience in regulating those investment flows during this period.

Enhancing The Transparency Dialogue In The “Santiago Principles” For Sovereign Wealth Funds, Adam D. Dixon

Seattle University Law Review

The financial crisis ultimately caused Western governments to welcome sovereign wealth fund (SWF) investment as a way to put a floor under collapsing markets and to provide a set of voluntary principles that would underwrite SWFs’ claim to legitimacy in the international community. In the autumn of 2007, then U.S. Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson, in conjunction with the International Monetary Fund, convened the International Working Group of SWFs (IWG) to draft a set of generally accepted principles and practices. These principles are referred to as the “Santiago Principles.” The implicit objective of these twenty-four voluntary principles is to promote ...

Exporting Fatca, Joshua D. Blank, Ruth Mason

New York University Law and Economics Working Papers

The Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act (FATCA) represents a powerful response by the United States to flagrant offshore tax evasion. Although the new reporting regime has been criticized as unilateral and extraterritorial, this short article, prepared for a symposium hosted by Pepperdine Law Review, shows that multilateralism and cooperation so far have been the keys to implementing FATCA. In addition to spurring bilateral Intergovernmental Agreements (IGAs) to implement FATCA, and copycat legislation in other jurisdictions, for many countries, the FATCA reporting requirements represent an aspirational new global standard for automatic exchange of information – one that would supplement, if not replace ...

The Accidental Postmodernists: A New Era Of Skepticism In Environmental Law, Shi-Ling Hsu

Shi-Ling Hsu

Environmental law and policy conflicts seem to have entered a new phase. The emergence of complex problems such as climate change and of complex technologies such as hydraulic fracturing and genetic modification have created new political and legal schisms that no longer break down predictably along "pro-environment" versus "pro-business" lines. Rather, a new era of skepticism seems to be taking hold in which antagonists spar over the epistemic legitimacy of certain claims made in support of a policy position. Environmental law and policy conflicts thus divide antagonists into two camps: self-styled positivists – scientists (physical, chemical, biological, and social) and environmental ...

Lawyers And Fools: Lawyer-Directors In Public Corporations, Lubomir P. Litov, Simone M. Sepe, Charles K. Whitehead

Cornell Law Faculty Publications

The accepted wisdom—that a lawyer who becomes a corporate director has a fool for a client—is outdated. The benefits of lawyer-directors in today’s world significantly outweigh the costs. Beyond monitoring, they help manage litigation and regulation, as well as structure compensation to align CEO and shareholder interests. The results have been an average 9.5% increase in firm value and an almost doubling in the percentage of public companies with lawyer-directors.

This Article is the first to analyze the rise of lawyer-directors. It makes a variety of other empirical contributions, each of which is statistically significant and ...