Bryan Camp
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Articles by Bryan Camp
TaxProf Blog
In addition to torturing students in my basic Income Tax course, I traumatize first year law students in my Civil Procedure course. One topic we cover in Civil Procedure is preclusion. Preclusion is a common law doctrine that prevents the re-litigation of matters that either were litigated in a prior suit, or should have been litigated in a prior suit. Sometimes preclusion prevents a litigant from getting more than one bite of the proverbial apple.
TaxProf Blog
Friday, August 8, 2025 Americans for Tax Fairness, Fortune 100 Profits Jumped By $100 Billion Over Past Year Thanks to TCJA Bloomberg, GOP Pins Midterm Hopes on Trump Tax Bill’s Front-Loaded Refunds, Delayed Cuts Bloomberg, IRS Proposes Standards Shift for Tax-Advantaged Fringe Benefits Bloomberg, IRS Won’t Lower Withholding This Year to Reflect Trump Tax Cuts Bloomberg, Trump Allies Bet on Tax Refunds Soon, Safety-Net Cuts Later Cato Institute, Nine Examples of Waste in the New Markets Tax...
TaxProf Blog
Monday, August 4, 2025 When I teach Tax Practice and Procedure, my students regularly confuse the concepts of assessment and liability. They think that taxpayers have no liabilities until-and-unless the IRS properly assesses those liabilities. No assessment, no liability! And if the IRS abates an assessment, why that nukes the liability as well. No assessment, no liability! The taxpayers in Moxon Corp. v. Commissioner, 165 T.C. No. 2 (July 2, 2025)(Judge Goeke), were similarly confused.
TaxProf Blog
Section 6751(b) requires supervisory approval before the IRS can assess certain penalties. The statute is untouched by the recently enacted BBBA. In late December Treasury published these final rules on how the IRS must comply with the statute. Professor Caleb Smith shared some good thoughts on them on this Procedurally Taxing post. This Lesson is an opportunity to see how they will work.
TaxProf Blog
Friday, July 11, 2025 Stephen Akers (Bessemer Trust), 2025 Tax Law Changes: Key Takeaways for High-Income Taxpayers American Prospect, Ten Bizarre Things Hidden in Trump’s Big Beautiful Bill Axios, Gamblers Full of "Rage" Over Trump's "Big, Beautiful Bill" Tax Changes Bloomberg, A Status Quo Rate in Trump Tax Bill Is Big Win for Corporations Bloomberg, Trump Tax Law Is Surprise Boon for Affordable Housing Bloomberg, Trump’s Tax Bill Will Add Trillions to the US Debt. Does It Matter?
TaxProf Blog
Tuesday, June 10, 2025 Law.com, JD-Next, GRE Gaining Popularity for Law School Admittance: While most students are still being admitted to law school using the Law School Admission Test (LSAT), 92 law schools, including a number of top-ranked programs, admitted students in their 2023-24 class with the Graduate Record Exam (GRE), while seven admitted students with the JD-Next exam.
TaxProf Blog
Monday, June 2, 2025 Businesses fail. That’s a feature of capitalism, not a bug. Mark Twain discovered that when he lost his first fortune investing in a business that failed, the Paige Compositor. He not only lost his fortune but some say he also lost his sense of humor. Certainly his later works become more dystopian. See e.g. The Mysterious Stranger, or A Connecticut Yankee in King Author's Court.
TaxProf Blog
Monday, May 5, 2025 Tax practice is like comedy: timing is critical. In tax, however, messing up timing is no laughing matter. As the sainted Justice Holmes once wrote (in a tax case, nach): “Men must turn square corners when they deal with the Government.” Rock Island R.R. v. United States, 254 U.S. 141, 143 (1920). That is especially true with deadlines.
TaxProf Blog
Monday, April 7, 2025 I still don’t carry dental insurance. I have not found a plan where the numbers make sense. The benefits are so limited that by the time I would need them I will have paid more in premiums than the benefits are worth. The game is not worth the candle. So I take the money I would otherwise spend on premiums and save it up. In effect I self-insure. Businesses face the same choice in managing their various risks. For most risks they can pay a third party, an insurance company.
TaxProf Blog
How much deference should courts give Treasury regulations? Until 2011, courts answered that question differently from how they evaluated deference to regulations issued by other federal agencies. In that year, however, the Supreme Court decided that Treasury regulations should be treated the same way as all federal regulations. Mayo Foundation v. United States, 562 U.S. 44 (2011).
TaxProf Blog
Wednesday, March 5, 2025 Shannon W. McCormack (University of Washington) presents America's Failure to Rescue Parents: A Narrative of Inequitable Tax "Reform", 76 U.C. L.J. ___ (2025), at Missouri today as part of its Tax Policy Colloquium hosted by David Gamage: Other developed nations provide a slew of direct benefits to parents, such as paid parental leave and affordable childcare.
TaxProf Blog
Tuesday, March 4, 2025 Daniel J. Hemel (NYU; Google Scholar), Law and the New Dynamic Public Finance, 43 Yale J. on Regul. __ (2026): In recent years, economists working in public finance and related fields have applied a new set of models and methodologies to the problems of inequality and economic insecurity. This innovative approach—often known as “the new dynamic public finance”—emphasizes the challenges posed by productivity changes across the lifecycle and policy changes over time.
TaxProf Blog
When a taxpayer contests IRS collection actions in a Collection Due Process (CDP) hearing, the hearing is officially over when the Office of Appeals issues a formal Notice of Determination. Section 6330(d)(1) gives taxpayers 30 days from the date of that Notice to petition the Tax Court for judicial review of the Office of Appeals decision. We now know that the doctrine of equitable tolling can extend the 30-day limitation period in §6330 because that timing requirement is not jurisdictional.
TaxProf Blog
Section 6213 generally gives taxpayers 90 days after the IRS mails them a Notice of Deficiency (NOD) to petition the Tax Court for review. That’s the 90-day rule. But some lucky taxpayers get 150 days instead of the usual 90. That’s the 150-day rule. Who are those lucky taxpayers?
TaxProf Blog
Thursday, December 5, 2024 Following up on my previous posts: Foley & Lardner Rescinds Offer To Incoming Associate Due To Anti-Israel Comments (Dec.
TaxProf Blog
Many people imagine the IRS as a kind of huge and powerful being, “whose frown, and wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command” regularly oversees enforcement of what many believe are outrageous penalties for errors in complying with increasingly twisted reporting requirements.
TaxProf Blog
Friday, November 8, 2024 This week, Doron Narotzki (Akron; Google Scholar) reviews The Effect of Government Transparency on Corporate Tax Avoidance: Evidence from State Freedom of Information Laws by Dongdi (Grace) Gu (University of Texas-Dallas), Jiapeng He (Chinese University of Hong Kong), Ying Huang (University of Texas-Dallas), and Ningzhong Li (University of Texas-Dallas).
TaxProf Blog
We often talk about “the IRS” as if it were a person (or animal!). Or we talk about the “Treasury Department” doing this or that. But agencies are legal fictions. They do not exist. The actual work is done by actual people. Thus when you read statutes that Congress writes, you see that Congress generally grants powers not to the agency but instead to just a single person, generally “the Secretary” of a department.
TaxProf Blog
Friday, November 8, 2024 Tuesday, November 12: Luís Carlos Calderón Gómez (Cardozo; Google Scholar) will present Too Hard to Insure as part of the UC-Irvine Tax Policy Colloquium. If you would like to attend, please RSVP here. Tuesday, November 12: Alex Zhang (Emory; Google Scholar) will present Fiscal Citizenship And Taxpayer Privacy, 125 Colum. L. Rev. __ (2025), as part of the NYU Tax Policy and Public Finance Colloquium. If you would like to attend, please contact Daniel Shaviro.
TaxProf Blog
I was going to blog today on a great case involving application of the Cohan rule to help a taxpayer establish their basis in property when they had lost their records. Pak v. Commissioner, T.C. Memo. 2024-86. I decided not to because Les Book did such a nice job blogging about it here on Procedurally Taxing that I did not feel I would add much value. However, one result of reducing these Lessons to once-a-month is that I easily found another case to teach a good Lesson.
TaxProf Blog
This past June, the Supreme Court issued an opinion in Moore v. United States, 144 S.Ct. 1680 (June 20, 2024). There, the taxpayers were shareholders of an American-controlled foreign corporation called KisanKraft and were being taxed on a portion of the corporation’s income that had been earned long ago and far away but never actually passed on to them substantively.
TaxProf Blog
Monday, August 5, 2024 Section 469 generally denies taxpayers the ability to use net losses from passive activities to offset income from active activities. Renting real property is a passive activity. But there are some exceptions when it comes to renting real estate. Two are relevant for today’s lesson. First, taxpayers who are real estate professionals can deduct such losses.
TaxProf Blog
Wednesday, July 10, 2024 Scott Devito (Jacksonville; Google Scholar), The Kids Are Definitely Not All Right: An Empirical Study Establishing a Statistically Significant Negative Relationship between Receiving Accommodations in Law School and Passing the Bar Exam, 102 Or. L. Rev. 1 (2023): Throughout my career as a law professor and a law school dean, I have had a deep interest in the science of learning, academic support programs, and law school bar passage programming.
TaxProf Blog
Congress wants taxpayers to save for retirement. To encourage such savings, Congress authorizes a smorgasbord of tax-advantaged retirement plans that taxpayers can use. Authority for such plans are scattered in different statutes, such as §401, §403, and §408. Again, the purpose of these provisions is to allow taxpayers to save for retirement. Congress give other ways for taxpayers to defer taxation on savings for other purposes, such as post-secondary education. See e.g. §529.
TaxProf Blog
Wednesday, June 5, 2024 Kun Chol Kim (Ernst & Young; Google Scholar), Justice, Third-Party Funding, and Tax Treaty Arbitration, 33 Ind. Int'l & Comp. L. Rev. 39 (2023): Resolving tax treaty disputes and improving dispute resolution mechanisms for tax treaty disputes have been important topics for international tax for decades, but it has not been an easy journey for the international tax community including policymakers, international bodies, and academics to come up with a clear solution.
TaxProf Blog
Many statutes require the IRS to send taxpayers notices. What confuses my students (and many taxpayers) is that the statutes rarely require that the taxpayer actually receive a particular notice; they just require the IRS to properly send the notice. And the IRS will always meet the statutory requirement if the IRS sends the notice in question to the taxpayer’s “last known address.” As you can guess from the scare quotes, that phrase is a term of art.
TaxProf Blog
“The power to tax involves the power to destroy.” Justice John Marshall in McCulloch v. Maryland, 17 U.S. 316, 431 (1819). “Sometimes a tax is...just a tax.” — Sigmund Freud’s Tax Advisor. Today’s lesson is about how to tell when an excise tax is really a penalty. The answer I learn is: “why do you want to know?” I hope to explain why that answer makes the most sense. In Clair R. Couturier Jr. v. Commissioner, T.C. Memo. 2024-6 (Jan.
TaxProf Blog
Monday, December 2, 2024 Jerome Hughes (District of Columbia), Envisioning §501(c)(3) Social Impact Cooperatives as a Strategy to Address Poverty, 53 Cumb. L. Rev. 398 (2023): Section 501(c)(3) of the Internal Revenue Code (“I.R.C.”) provides federal tax exemption to nonprofit organizations that are organized and operated exclusively for exempt and charitable purposes, including the relief of the poor.
TaxProf Blog
When Congress giveth a tax benefit with one hand, it sometimes taketh the other hand and slaps the taxpayer silly, eliminating the benefit the taxpayer thought they had. Today's lesson is an example of that phenomenon. It’s kind of like a bad joke, an appropriate lesson for April 1st. Specifically, the one hand is found in §104(a)(1).
TaxProf Blog
Section 162 permits taxpayers to deduct all the “ordinary and necessary expenses” they incur in carrying on their trade or business. Generally, we know that taxpayers who claim §162 deductions must substantiate them. Generally, we know that means taxpayer must provide receipts. Cohan v. Commissioner, 39 F.2d 540 (2d Cir.
TaxProf Blog
Friday, March 8, 2024 This week, David Elkins (Netanya, Google Scholar) reviews Miranda Perry Fleischer (San Diego; Google Scholar), A New Look at Old Money, 98 S. Cal. L. Rev. _ (2024). Perhaps no tax generates as much visceral reaction as does the estate tax. To its proponents it promotes equality of opportunity, offsets to some extent the income tax advantages enjoyed by capital, and impedes dynastic wealth and power.
TaxProf Blog
In Stephanie Murrin v. Commissioner, T.C. Memo. 2024-10 (Jan. 26, 2024), Judge Urda decided that the fraudulent acts of a return preparer starting in 1993, made an honest taxpayer liable for some $65,000 in deficiencies resulting from the 30-year old fraud of someone else, plus some $15k in §6662 penalties. That is, the return preparer’s fraud opened up the unlimited period in §6501(c)(1) for the IRS to assess the deficiency against the taxpayer.
TaxProf Blog
A recent Tax Court precedential decision raises a really interesting question about the application of §7451’s tolling provision to seemingly late-filed Tax Court Petitions. In Madiodio Sall v. Commissioner, 161 T.C. 13 (Nov. 30, 2023) (Judge Buch), the deadline for the taxpayer to file his Petition fell on Thanksgiving Day. We all know that means that the deadline got kicked to the next day, Friday. Thanks §7503! But the taxpayer did not file on Friday. Nope.
TaxProf Blog
Crowdfunding is a widely used method for individuals to raise funds, whether it be for a charitable purpose, a business, or a specific event. As online crowdfunding campaigns have become more common, questions arise regarding the role that tax law has to play in that phenomenon. For example, when the underlying motivation is primarily donative, questions arise as to whether the transfer is income to the recipient or provides a charitable deduction to the donor. In this week’s feature article, Prof.
TaxProf Blog
Change happens. After talking with Paul I will be changing from a once-a-week article to a once-a-month article. So my Lessons From The Tax Court series will continue in 2024, but now on the first Monday of each month, starting February 5th. By my count I've written somewhere between 312 and 320 weekly Lessons From The Tax Court since my first one in September 2017. They average about 2,500 words. That roughs out to about 800,000 words.
TaxProf Blog
Saturday, December 23, 2023 Legal Education: New York Sun, ‘I’m Not Responsible For Charlie’s Situation:’ Wendi Coldly Dismisses Frantic Donna After Charlie's Conviction In Dan Markel's Murder Mike Spivey, Projected 2024-25 U.S. News Rankings Of All 196 Law Schools Ben Sasse (President, University of Florida), Tobacco Company CEOs, Ivy League Presidents, And Race WTGC, Will Wendi Adelson Get Tried Next For Dan Markel’s Murder?
TaxProf Blog
Monday, December 18, 2023 The Theodore Tannenwald, Jr. Foundation for Excellence in Tax Scholarship has announced the winners of the 2023 tax writing competition: First Prize ($5,000): Colin Heath (NYU), Taxing “Borrow” in “Buy/Borrow/Die” Faculty Sponsor: Daniel Hemel Continue reading December 18, 2023 in ABA Tax Section, Legal Ed News, Legal Education, Scholarship, Tax, Tax Daily, Tax Scholarship, Teaching | Permalink With the ABA's release of the 509 data on Friday, 75% of the components...
TaxProf Blog
Here is a chronological listing of all the Lessons From The Tax Court I posted in 2023, with links to the Lesson, the primary case discussed, and its author. I have also listed the primary Code sections mentioned or discussed in the Lesson. At the end of the chronological listing, you will find a table listing the posts by which Tax Court Judge authored the Court's opinion. January 23: The Meaning Of 'Business Premises' In §119, Cory H. Smith v. Commissioner, T.C. Memo. 2023-12 (Jan.
TaxProf Blog
Monday, December 18, 2023 With the ABA's release of the 509 data on Friday, 75% of the components of the current 2023-24 U.S. News law school rankings methodology are now publicly available. (The remaining 25% is the U.S. News proprietary assessment scores (12.5% peer assessment and 12.5% lawyer/judge assessment). Mike Spivey has crunched the numbers and released projected 2024-25 rankings of all 196 law schools.
TaxProf Blog
[Author's note: This will be my last new post until January. Next Monday, December 18, my annual Year Of Lessons From The Tax Court will appear in this space. It is a chronological listing of all the Lessons I posted in 2023, with links to each Lesson, the primary case discussed, and the judge who wrote the opinion. You can find last year's edition here. I will be spending my days (except for Christmas Day) grading exams.
TaxProf Blog
Monday, December 4, 2023 [Author's Note: I am preparing exams and so take a break this week from writing a new Lesson. I offer a reposting of a Lesson from 2019 that I really liked, but one that did not get a lot of views when originally posted. I hope you enjoy it!] Mitchel Skolnick and Leslie Skolnick, et al. v. Commissioner, T.C. Memo. 2019-64 (June 3, 2019) (Judge Lauber), teaches an important lesson about the proper use of expert witnesses.
TaxProf Blog
In the past few years there have apparently been a lot of excited Tik Tok posts about how closely held businesses can use the “Augusta Rule” to get a double tax benefit: a deduction for the business under §162 and tax free income to the business owner under §280A(g). In Kunjlata J. Jadhav and Jalandar Y. Jadhav v. Commissioner, T.C. Memo. 2023-140 (Nov.
TaxProf Blog
Friday, November 24, 2023 Monday, November 27: Ariel Jurow Kleiman (Loyola-L.A.; Google Scholar), Shayak Sarkar (UC-Davis; Google Scholar) & Emily Satterthwaite (Georgetown; Google Scholar) will present Towards an Understanding of Nannies' Tax Experiences and Preferences as part of the Loyola-L.A. Tax Policy Colloquium. If you would like to attend, please RSVP here.
TaxProf Blog
I cannot say it enough: the IRS is not an entity. It’s a vast organization with various offices that perform various functions. And one key idea is that taxpayers may have multiple paths to get to a successful result. If one office cannot help you perhaps a different one can. At the IRS that often means if you cannot get good results in Exam or Collection you might get them in Appeals. And sometimes you can get to Tax Court from Appeals. But sometimes not. It's path dependent as we learn today.
TaxProf Blog
Section 7430(a) permits a court to award “reasonable administrative costs” and “reasonable litigation costs” (the largest being attorneys fees) to a taxpayer who is a “prevailing party” in a dispute with the IRS. I use all those scare quotes to emphasize that these are all terms of art.
TaxProf Blog
This week we learn a lesson about the interplay between the supervisory approval requirement in §6751(b) and the §6662 penalty regime. While §6662(a) seems to impose a single penalty for accuracy-related error, we learn that if the IRS is either careful or lucky, it can cure one defective §6662 approval by later asserting in Tax Court a seemingly different §6662 penalty and getting the proper supervisory approval for that second bite at the penalty apple. In Stephen R. Kelley and Isabelle Kelley v.
TaxProf Blog
Sunday, November 12, 2023 Following up on last Sunday's post, The Christian Faith Of Speaker Of The House Mike Johnson: Adam Chodorow (Arizona State; Google Scholar), Mike Johnson Wants to Unleash Ministers on Politics: If the new speaker of the House goes after the Johnson Amendment (no relation!), it will be bad for elections and religion.
TaxProf Blog
Tax law is supposed to be uniform. The thousands of pages of statutes and regulations are supposed to be applied to taxpayers living in Texas in the same way as taxpayers living in California. The IRS is a single federal agency charged with applying the law uniformly. And the Tax Court is a single national trial court that can and does travel to every corner of the United States to resolve most disputes that arise between taxpayers and the IRS. But tax law is not uniform.
TaxProf Blog
When the IRS determines a deficiency of tax, it is then “authorized to send notice of such deficiency to the taxpayer.” §6212(a). That’s called a Notice of Deficiency (NOD). The taxpayer generally has 90 days from the date of the NOD to petition the Tax Court to ask for a “redetermination of the deficiency.” §6213(a). The procedures outlined in §§6212 and 6213 carry several important consequences. First, the IRS is prohibited from sending a second NOD for the tax year(s) covered by the NOD.
TaxProf Blog
One lesson I teach my students is that taxpayers are generally best off resolving issues with the IRS before seeking judicial help. Another lesson is that taxpayers have multiple opportunities to work with the IRS in the collection process. So just because one opportunity fails does not mean the taxpayer is out of options. Today we see a great example of both lessons in Eric Wilfred Olson v. Commissioner, T.C. Memo. 2023-123 (Oct.10, 2023) (Judge Weiler).
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