This article discusses Allstar Marketing Group, LLC v. United States, in which the Court of International Trade ruled, in 2017, on a question of cosmic significance: whether, for purposes of computing the tariff due on importation, a Snuggie is a blanket or a garment. The stakes were...

This article considers what the measure of income should be if a tuition reduction is taxable, and it challenges the idea that an educational institution's stated tuition figure should control in that determination. It's the value of the reduction, not the dollar difference between sticker price...

The Origination Clause of the Constitution provides that “[a]ll Bills for raising Revenue shall originate in the House of Representatives; but the Senate may propose or concur with Amendments as on other Bills.” This article considers whether a taxpayer has any chance of success in...

The attorneys general of New York, Connecticut, New Jersey, and Maryland have filed the complaint in New York v. Mnuchin, challenging the constitutionality of the $10,000 cap on the deduction for state and local taxes established by the Tax Cut and Jobs Act of 2017. This article considers the...

Bob Rains has written a wonderful little book, True Tales for Trying Times: Legal Fables for Today. This review, overflowing with embarrassingly sophomoric humor, explains why you should buy and read True Tales

This review considers a novel about life (and death) on the University of Chicago Law Review, where editors and associates seem to do little but have sex, connive to get ahead, have sex, kill (with Gunther's con law casebook, no less), and have sex. The reviewer, who didn't attend the U of C law...

Does the constitutional requirement that the quot;compensationquot; of federal judges quot;not be diminished during their Continuance in officequot; preclude Congress from subjecting sitting judges to the social security taxes from which they had previously been exempt? In Hatter v. United...

This article considered the traditional justifications for nonrecognition treatment for like-kind exchanges, as provided in section 1031 of the Internal Revenue Code, and found them wanting. The article nevertheless concluded that, even though the justifications are imperfect, section 1031 has...

This series of three articles (that's why it's a trilogy, duh-h-h) chronicles the legal-academic career of one S. Breckinridge Tushingham (quot;Breckquot; for short). As the trilogy unfolds, Breck works his way up (or maybe it's down) from his first academic position to an established...

Bradley T. Borden's Tax-Free Like-Kind Exchanges, a treatise on transactions governed by section 1031 of the Internal Revenue Code, is as comprehensive and useful as one could hope for. As a guide for legal practitioners, the treatise is unlikely to be surpassed, and it also contains interesting...