#TaxValentines 2021

By: Leandra Lederman

The Tax Valentines poems on Twitter are always a highlight of the winter for me. Tax folks can be very creative weaving together romance and tax concepts! This year, there seemed to be fewer overall, but there still are plenty to be found if you search #TaxValentines on Twitter. Prof. Kathleen DeLaney Thomas even shared Tax Valentines her students wrote as a fundraiser for public interest grants for UNC Law students!

Here are a couple of new ones I didn’t get a chance to post on Twitter:

Roses are red
You are so fine
If you were a deduction
You’d be above the line
#TaxValentines
Continue reading “#TaxValentines 2021”

#TrumpTaxReturns

By Sam Brunson

Image from 401kcalculator.org. CC BY-SA 2.0

For the last several months, I’ve been meeting a guitarist and sometimes other musicians at a Chicago park to play outdoor socially-distanced jazz. This Sunday, driving home, my wife asked me if we knew what Trump had paid in taxes. “Of course not,” I confidently responded. “It looks like we do now,” she said.

And with that, my work goals for this week changed. I’m sure everybody reading this has seen Sunday’s New York Times story (and probably also its follow-up from yesterday). Along with a ton of other tax people, I’ve been trying to make sense of and contextualize the story, both to myself and to the public. And I’ve largely been doing my thinking in real-time on Twitter.[fn1]

I thought that I’d assemble a lot of those Twitter threads here into one place. At most I’ll lightly edit them and I’ll link to the actual threads on Twitter, too. Because over there I included GIFs on almost every tweet and I think I outdid myself. The relevant content will be here, though. Continue reading “#TrumpTaxReturns”

Happy #TaxValentines Day!

TwitterHeartBy: Leandra Lederman

#TaxTwitter has been waxing poetic again this year. The #TaxValentines are not to be missed!

I’ll post just one (a new one) here; follow the links above to see more!

Roses are red
I give you my heart
And all of my tax problems
‘Til death do us part

#TaxValentines #IRC6013d3 #notsoinnocentspouse

Happy Valentine’s Day! ❤

#TaxValentines

Heart1By: Leandra Lederman

It’s the time of year when tax experts are Twitterpated! Yes, on tax Twitter, it’s not Singles Awareness Day, but rather time for #TaxValentines! Twitter member Jeremy Cape reportedly started them a few years ago. Many of the valentines take the traditional format of the classic love poem, such as this never-before-tweeted basic tax valentine:

Roses are red

Violets are blue

I adore taxes

And I also love you

 

I like to play with the second line, such as in this one that I tweeted last year:

 

This next one plays with “rose” and is also a public service announcement:

 

Some of the tax valentines include plays on words, political commentary, and/or comments on recent tax developments. Here’s an example, with my follow-up, too:

Continue reading “#TaxValentines”

More on Section 199A and Worker Classification (**Threaded Tweet Alert!)

Shu-Yi Oei

Last Friday, Diane and I posted a new paper called “Is New Code Section 199A Really Going to Turn Us All into Independent Contractors?” on SSRN. This was something that started as a blog post but then grew too long and so became a short paper. We plan to develop the ideas in it more robustly in future work.

On Saturday, I made one of those goofy academic tweet threads summarizing the paper, and then it occurred to me that I really liked my goofy tweet thread! Therefore, I’ve taken the liberty of posting the tweets here for the marginal reader who is just interested enough in the topic to read the tweets but possibly not interested enough to read the actual paper.

Diane and I look forward to continuing conversation on this.

Grover and Godwin

By Sam Brunson

Over the weekend, tax opponent extraordinaire and Americans for Tax Reform founder Grover Norquist said …

Well, I’ll let him speak for himself:

In two follow-up tweets (here and here), he clarified and doubled-down on his position: essentially, he argues that (a) without the 16th Amendment, the country couldn’t have enacted an income tax, (b) without an income tax, we couldn’t have afforded to enter World War I, (c) if we hadn’t entered the war, the Versailles Treaty wouldn’t have happened,[fn1] and (d) without the Versailles Treaty, World War II, with all of its attendant evils, wouldn’t have happened.[fn2] Continue reading “Grover and Godwin”

Top 2017 Tax Twitter Follows

By David Herzig

Every year, Kelly Erb (@taxgirl) posts her top tax Twitter follows.  This year, I was fortunate to make the list.  In addition to my shameless self promotion, I am directing you to her article because it was nice to see that many other academics made the list.

I think the fact that so many academics made this list is very important right now.  First, academics tend to get a bad rap for living in ivory towers.  Twitter is a great egalitarian platform. Second, in the upcoming months, active engagement by the best and brightest is paramount.  Twitter for all its flaws allows for real time interactions.  Seriously, you would be amazed how far you can spread your knowledge!  Finally, it reminds me to update my old list I posted at Surly. If I am missing your name, please let me know and I will repost later this month.

In the meantime, here were the academics on the list:

Tim Todd – @lawproftodd – Assoc Dean for Academic Affairs & Law Professor @LibertyLaw;

Andy Grewal – @AndyGrewal  – Professor of Law, @uiowa;

Judith Freedman – @JudithFreedman –  Oxford University Professor of Taxation Law;

Lily Batchelder  – @lilybatch – Professor of Law & Public Policy at @nyulaw;

David Herzig  – @professortax –  – Professor of Law @ValparaisoLaw;

Allison Christians – @taxpolblog –  Stikeman Chair in Tax Law, McGill University; and

Xavier Oberson – @XavierRoberson –  Professor of Swiss and International Tax Law at Geneva University

Tax Professors on @Twitter

A little over a week ago, I came across an article titled Top 50 Law Professors on Twitter. I did not even want to link to the article (although I did) because there was not one tax professor on the list. So on this #followfriday, if that is still a thing, I thought I would created a list of tax professors on @twitter. If I missed you, I am sorry; just send me your twitter handle or follow me and I will add it to the list!

Starting with the SurlySubgroup (@surlysubgroup)

Jennifer Bird-Pollan (@jbirdpollan)

Sam Brunson (@smbrnsn)

Phil Hackney (@EOTaxProf)

David Herzig (@professortax)

Leandra Lederman (@leandra2848)

Ben Leff (@benmosesleff)

Francine Lipman (@Narfnampil)

Diane Ring (@ringdi_dr)

Shu-Yi Oei (@shuyioei)

Stephanie Hoffer (@Profhoffer)

Other United States/Canadian Tax Professor (in no particular order):

Continue reading “Tax Professors on @Twitter”