Sovereign wealth funds enjoy an exemption from tax under section 892 of the tax code. This anachronistic provision offers an unconditional tax exemption when a foreign sovereign earns income from non-commercial activities in the United States. The provision, which was first enacted in 1917,...

This Essay analyzes the quot;Blackstone Bill,quot; which would treat Blackstone and other publicly-traded private equity firms as corporations for tax purposes. Earlier this year, the Blackstone IPO fueled a heated, somewhat confusing debate about taxing private equity. This Essay seeks to...

This Essay examines the problem of tax noncompliance through the prism of the options backdating scandal. The noncompliance of backdating was obvious, at least to tax lawyers. Backdating wasn't a sophisticated tax scheme. Rather, the noncompliance was collateral damage from weak internal...

This teaching case describes the hedging program of Southwest Airlines and asks students to consider whether the purchase of additional (now more costly) fuel hedging contracts makes sense. The case prepares students to consider arguments for and against hedging. The case also explores the legal...

This case study is a teaching exercise that was first used in the quot;Deals Workshopquot; seminar at Columbia Law School in April 2003. The case involves a potential investment by Columbia Venture Partners, a venture capital fund, in MedTech Inc., an emerging developer of medical devices for...

This Article takes the bursting of the dot com bubble as an opportunity to reevaluate the tax structure of venture capital startups. By organizing startups as corporations rather than as partnerships, investors and entrepreneurs seem to leave money on the table by failing to fully use tax losses...

Private equity fund managers take a share of the profits of the partnership as the equity portion of their compensation. The tax rules for compensating service partners create a planning opportunity for managers who receive the industry-standard quot;two and twentyquot; (a two percent management...

This Article takes the bursting of the dot com bubble as an opportunity to reevaluate the tax structure of venture capital startups. By organizing startups as corporations rather than as partnerships, investors and entrepreneurs seem to leave money on the table by failing to fully use tax losses...

This Case Study discusses the branding impact of the Google IPO. In a longer, Article-length version of this paper which appears in volume 104 of the Michigan Law Review, I argue that branding is an unappreciated element of contract design. Corporate finance scholars generally assume that...