The NYU Law Tax Blog

Pathways to Tax Reform: The Future of Pass-Through Entity Taxation (Mon., April 22, 12:30 PM)

jblank — Thu, 18 Apr 2013 12:01:20 +0000

Please join us next Monday, April 22 from 12:30-1:30 PM in Furman Hall Room 324 for the next installment in our Pathways to Tax Reform Series. Next week’s session is titled “The Future of Pass-Through Entity Taxation: A Discussion of the Ways & Means Committee Proposals.” In March 2013, the House Ways and Means Committee released a discussion draft of proposals that would make fundamental changes to the way that partnerships and S-corporations are taxed. If enacted, these provisions would take effect in 2014. These proposals may play an important role as the discussion of business tax reform progresses in DC. In this one-hour session, Professors Willard Taylor (NYU, Sullivan & Cromwell LLP) and John Steines (NYU) will provide an overview of the proposals and will moderate a group discussion. In addition, Mark Warren and Harold Hancock (House Ways & Means Committee) will provide commentary by phone. To help you prepare for the event, we have attached an outline, which describes the proposed legislation.

To RSVP for this event, please e-mail Jason Haynes at HaynesJ@exchange.law.nyu.edu.

Recent Developments in Tax Controversy (Thurs., April 4, 7:00 PM)

jblank — Thu, 28 Mar 2013 21:04:40 +0000

Thurs., April 4^th, 7:00-9:00 PM, Faculty Library, 3^rd Floor of Vanderbilt Hall

The New York Region of the Federal Bar Association Section on Taxation invites you to attend a discussion on recent developments in tax controversy. The presentation will include a discussion on recent court opinions on economic substance, debt-versus-equity, expert witness testimony, and discovery. The discussion will be followed by light refreshments. The primary speakers at the event will be Brian Power, Mayer Brown LLP and Elizabeth McGee, Shearman & Sterling LLP. Please RSVP to Erin Rodgers at erodgers@fedbar.org .

Ask the Expert (Witness): A Conversation With Professor Dan Shaviro (Thurs., April 4th, 12:30 PM)

jblank — Thu, 28 Mar 2013 21:03:27 +0000

Thurs., April 4^th, 12:30-1:30 PM, Furman Hall Room 330

What happens when a law professor becomes an expert witness? What sorts of challenges and issues does he or she face, what’s it like, and how does it relate to teaching and research activities? Professor Daniel Shaviro, Wayne Perry Professor of Taxation (NYU), will address these questions and more, based generally on his recent experiences. This program should be of interest to lawyers and future lawyers (especially tax lawyers) who may seek the services of expert witnesses, as well as to law professors who may consider becoming expert witnesses themselves. Light refreshments will be served, but please feel free to bring your lunch. To RSVP, please e-mail Greg Zwahlen at gregory.zwahlen@nyu.edu .

Pathways to Tax Reform: Progressive Consumption Taxation: The X Tax Revisited (Wed., April 3, 12:30 PM)

jblank — Thu, 28 Mar 2013 20:41:44 +0000

Please join us on Wednesday, April 3 from 12:30-1:30 PM in Vanderbilt Hall Room 216 for the next installment of our “Pathways to Tax Reform Series” for a discussion with Dr. Alan D. Viard, resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute. Dr. Viard will outline a proposal to “completely replace the income tax system with a progressive consumption tax.” He will argue that his approach “avoids the problems arising from the adoption of a consumption tax alongside the income tax and also avoids the distributional problems posed by regressive consumption taxes, such as the VAT.” Before joining the American Enterprise Institute, Dr. Viard was a senior economist at the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas and an assistant professor of economics at Ohio State University. He has also worked for the U.S. Treasury Department’s Office of Tax Analysis, the White House’s Council of Economic Advisers, and the Joint Tax Committee. In January 2010, Dr. Viard was named by Tax Notes as a nominee for 2009 Tax Person of the Year. To RSVP, please e-mail Greg Zwahlen at gregory.zwahlen@nyu.edu .

Tax Movie Night! To Pay or Not To Pay: Tax Dilemmas in Sitcoms (Thurs., Mar. 28, 6:30 PM)

jblank — Sun, 24 Mar 2013 01:37:35 +0000

This Thursday, March 28, from 6:30 PM-8:30 PM, please join us for the 4th Annual NYU Tax Movie Night! This year’s event is titled “To Pay or Not To Pay: Tax Dilemmas in Sitcoms.” We will screen four classic television episodes, spanning different decades, where major characters are faced with tax compliance choices. Some characters choose to report their tax liabilities honestly and others do not. The episodes featured are from “The Honeymooners” (1956), “The Phil Silvers Show” (1956), “The Mary Tyler Moore Show” (1975) and “The Simpsons” (1998). Professor Lawrence Zelenak from Duke Law School will join us as a special guest speaker and will lead a discussion on what popular culture can teach us about public attitudes toward tax compliance. Refreshments, including popcorn, will be served.

We should have plenty of space, but we would like to get a sense of how much food to order. To RSVP, please click here .

Pathways to Tax Reform Series: “Supplemental Expenditure Tax” (March 6, 12:30 PM)

jblank — Fri, 01 Mar 2013 21:10:27 +0000

On Wednesday, March 6th from 12:30 PM to 1:50 PM in Vanderbilt Hall Room 202, the Graduate Tax Program will continue its Pathways to Tax Reform Series, which began last week at the Law School’s Forum.

Victor Thuronyi, Senior Counsel at the International Monetary Fund, will present a proposal for a “Supplemental Expenditure Tax,” which would facilitate an overall tax reform package. A copy of the paper is attached. The Supplemental Expenditure Tax would be very similar to the current income tax, except that includable receipts would be defined more broadly, the tax would not apply until income is consumed and investment would generally be deductible. In addition to describing the proposal, the program will compare the Supplemental Expenditure Tax to several consumption tax alternatives. Professor Daniel Shaviro, the Wayne Perry Professor of Taxation at NYU School of Law, and David Miller, Partner at Cadwalader, Wickersham & Taft LLP, will provide commentary.

Please feel free to bring your lunch to this event. To RSVP, please email Kevin Agnese at kevin.agnese@nyu.edu . We hope you will join us for what should be an interesting and informative discussion.

Cliffs Forever? Tax Reform and the Future of Fiscal Policy (Wed., Feb. 20th)

jblank — Wed, 13 Feb 2013 16:44:34 +0000

Cliffs Forever?

Tax Reform and the Future of Fiscal Policy

Wednesday, February 20, 12:25-1:50 p.m.

Vanderbilt Hall, Greenberg Lounge

40 Washington Square South

After weeks of negotiations, in the first days of January, Congress and the Obama Administration struck a last-minute deal that averted the so-called “fiscal cliff”, a combination of federal tax increases and budget cuts. Yet this compromise merely deferred until March 1^st “sequestration”, which will cause the military and dozens of other government agencies to face about $1 trillion in automatic budget cuts over the coming decade. And, the debt limit again looms later in the year. Did Congress make progress toward reducing our fiscal shortfalls by enacting tax increases earlier this year? What is likely to happen in the upcoming sequestration negotiations and how will it affect the economy? Is tax reform the way forward, or is it a distraction? And why do budget and tax debates appear to occur only when the clock is ticking on looming high-stakes deadlines? Join a panel of experts for a timely discussion of these questions and more as we consider approaches to addressing America’s fiscal future.

Click here to RSVP for this event.

PANELISTS:

Rosanne Altshuler, Professor and Chair, Department of Economics, Rutgers University
David Kamin ’09, Assistant Professor of Law, NYU School of Law

Daniel Shaviro, Wayne Perry Professor of Taxation, NYU School of Law

MODERATOR:

Joshua Blank (LL.M. ’07), Professor of Tax Practice; Faculty Director of the Graduate Tax Program, NYU School of Law

Mitchell Kane files amicus brief in US Supreme Court foreign tax credit case, PPL Corp. v. Comm’r. Erin Scharff (’11) is counsel of record.

jblank — Sat, 26 Jan 2013 02:49:24 +0000

Mitchell Kane, Professor of Law, has co-authored an amicus brief in PPL Corp. v. Commissioner, Docket No. 12-43. Erin Scharff, Acting Assistant Professor of Tax Law, was the counsel of record on the brief. The U.S. Supreme Court will hear oral arguments in the case on February 20th. The issue presented is “Whether, in determining the creditability of a foreign tax, courts should employ a formalistic approach that looks solely at the form of the foreign tax statute and ignores how the tax actually operates, or should employ a substance-based approach that considers factors such as the practical operation and intended effect of the foreign tax.” A copy of the brief is available here.

David Kamin presents “Are We There Yet?: On a Path to Closing America’s Long-Run Deficit” (Jan. 23, 2013)

jblank — Fri, 18 Jan 2013 18:20:20 +0000

On Tuesday, January 22, David Kamin, Assistant Professor of Law, NYU School of Law, will present Are We There Yet?: On a Path to Closing America’s Long-Run Deficit at the Tax Policy Colloquium at NYU School of Law. The co-convenors of the Colloquium are Daniel Shaviro, Wayne Perry Professor of Taxation, NYU School of Law, and William Gale, the Arjay and Frances Miller Chair in Federal Economic Policy in the Economic Studies Program at the Brookings Institution. A brief abstract is below:

Many decry the fact that policymakers are nowhere close to addressing the longterm fiscal shortfall and as evidence they point to the Congressional Budget Office’s projection of enormous long-term deficits under current policy. This report contends that the minimum deficit reduction incorporated in leading progressive and conservative budgets can put us on a path toward closing the long-term deficit. A significant gap would remain even if consensus were fully realized. However, this report describes a plausible path for further cutting the long-term deficit, as well as important revenue and spending backstops. Finally, it explains that while the country can and should try to reach a fiscally sustainable path, because of the uncertainty surrounding many of those reforms — especially the restructuring of the healthcare system — we cannot expect an immediate solution.

A complete list of the Tax Policy Colloquium presentations for the rest of the Spring 2013 semester is available here.

The Internal Revenue Code at 100 (Oct 19th)

jblank — Thu, 11 Oct 2012 18:46:24 +0000

The NYU Graduate Tax Program and UCLA School of Law cordially invite you to the second annual NYU/UCLA Tax Policy Symposium, titled “The Internal Revenue Code at 100,” on Friday, October 19, 2012 from 9:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m. in Greenberg Lounge, Vanderbilt Hall, NYU School of Law, located at 40 Washington Square South.

This program is free of charge and will offer attendees 6 credits of CLE in the Area of Professional Practice.

The symposium will celebrate the 100th anniversary of the income tax in the United States. Participants will consider the evolution of the American income tax over the past century and will consider prospects for tax reform as the income tax begins its second century. The conference will feature panels on business taxation, international taxation, inequality and taxation and politics. A list of the panels and participants is below.
The NYU/UCLA Tax Policy Symposium hosted by NYU School of Law and UCLA School of Law is a joint annual conference focusing on tax policy issues from both a legal and economic perspective. It provides a forum in which leading scholars, policy-makers, and practitioners can analyze complex tax policy questions and options for reform and brings together members of both NYU Law’s tax law faculty and UCLA Law’s business law and policy program. It builds on tax policy symposia that have historically been hosted by the Tax Law Review, the premier law school journal for tax policy scholarship published at NYU School of Law, and the UCLA Colloquium on Tax Policy and Public Finance, started in 2004. Financial support for this conference is provided by NYU School of Law and the Lowell Milken Institute of Business Law and Policy, UCLA School of Law.

For more information and to RSVP for the conference, please click here, or copy and paste the following registration link: http://nyulaw.imodules.com/taxconference .

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The Internal Revenue Code at 100, October 19^th, 9:00 AM to 5:00 PM

Breakfast and Registration 8:30-9:00 a.m. Greenberg Lounge

Introduction/Opening Remarks 9:00-9:20 a.m.

Deborah Schenk, Marilynn and Ronald Grossman Professor of Taxation, NYU Law School and Editor-in-Chief, Tax Law Review

Business Tax Panel 9:20-10:50 a.m.

Moderator: Josh Blank, Professor of Tax Practice; Faculty Director, Graduate Tax Program, NYU Law School

Kimberly Clausing, Thormund A. Miller and Walter Mintz Professor of Economics, Reed College
Steven Bank, Professor of Law, UCLA Law School
Noël Cunningham, Professor of Law, NYU Law School and Mitchell Engler, Professor of Law, Cardozo Law School

Break 10:50-11:05 a.m.

Inequality Panel 11:05 a.m. -12:35 p.m.

Moderator: Jason Oh, Acting Professor of Law, UCLA Law School

David Kamin, Assistant Professor of Law, NYU Law School
Eric Zolt, Michael H. Schill Distinguished Professor of Law, UCLA Law School
Len Burman, Daniel Patrick Moynihan Professor of Public Affairs, Maxwell School, Syracuse University

Lunch break 12:45-1:45 p.m.

International Tax Panel 1:45 – 3:15 p.m.

Moderator: Daniel Shaviro, Wayne Perry Professor of Taxation, NYU Law School

Mitchell Kane, Professor of Law, NYU Law School
David Lenter, Legislation Counsel, Joint Committee on Taxation
John Steines, Professor of Law, NYU Law School

Break 3:15 – 3:30 p.m.

Politics Panel 3:30 – 5 p.m.

Moderator: Kirk Stark, Professor of Law, UCLA Law School

George Yin, Edwin S. Cohen Distinguished Professor of Law and Taxation, Thomas F. Bergin Teaching Professor, University of Virginia School of Law
Anne Alstott, Jacquin D. Bierman Professor of Taxation, Yale Law School
Joseph Thorndike, Director, Tax History Project, Tax Analysts