@andrew@esq.social
@andrew@esq.social avatar

andrew

@[email protected]

[he/him]

Tax/Technology Attorney
Admin @ https://esq.social open to all #legal and #law adjacent folks

Columnist @ Bloomberg Tax
Contributor @ TechCrunch, Baseball Prospectus,
Law360 etc.

Adjunct Prof @ Drexel Kline School of Law

Bestie to https://esq.social/@gina

https://lawstodon.org

#tax #tawlaw #tech #legaltech #law #lawfedi #baseball #economics #finance #fintech #history #politics #newjersey #pennsylvania #cabins #motorcycles #ebikes #podcasting #mastoadmin

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andrew, to law
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Hey #lawfedi friends, every day a new person in #law or #legal adjacent fields joints the #fediverse and isn't aware of Lawstodon - the legal community directory for #Mastodon (and eventually the fediverse more broadly).

Feel free to add yourself, claim your profile, etc. I have been using it when I send recommendations for folks looking for practitioners in specific practice areas and it works a treat!

@law

https://www.lawstodon.org

andrew, to law
@andrew@esq.social avatar

This week I wrote about #Pillar2.

Just in time to read to your children on the eve of whatever December holiday you may or may not celebrate. It literally works equally well for all of them.

"Allowing refundable credits to be treated as income rather than a reduction in taxes paid effectively allows a backdoor for state-sponsored tax avoidance strategies that the OECD’s BEPS project intended to eliminate.”

#lawfedi @law

https://news.bloomberglaw.com/tax-insights-and-commentary/multinationals-need-universal-treatment-on-pillar-two-credits

andrew, to law
@andrew@esq.social avatar

I got to squeeze a lot of puns in this short piece on the "Chicken Tax" that is actually a ... tax on light pickup trucks.

"The US introduced the tax after negotiations to resolve the rooster ruckus reached a stalemate. The Lyndon B. Johnson administration imposed a 25% tariff on light trucks—specifically to capture the Volkswagen Microbus—as well as other exportable goods where the offending EU states would feel the pinch."

@law

https://news.bloomberglaw.com/tax-insights-and-commentary/week-in-insights-the-chicken-tax-has-made-an-enduring-impact

andrew, to law
@andrew@esq.social avatar

Mornin' folks! This is your semi-regular (but not really) reminder that all of the various federated implementations of ActivityPub and related projects for and adjacent professionals can be found in one place.

And, it just happens to look straight out of 2002. Isn't that neat?

Come join us!

@law

https://lawfedi.org

andrew, to law
@andrew@esq.social avatar

Great student-written piece on the undergraduate law program at Drexel Kline, of which my intro to tax theory and policy class is a (small) part.

@law

https://www.thetriangle.org/news/a-deep-dive-into-drexels-undergraduate-law-program/

andrew, to law
@andrew@esq.social avatar

Regardless of the outcome in #Moore, the path forward for equitable taxation is through the #estate tax -- at least as long as the #SCOTUS makeup remains as it is.

“A wealth tax would function by creating deemed realization events ... An estate tax system that doesn’t provide a stepped-up basis to inheritors would do the same thing but would collapse the events to just one—at death.”

#lawfedi @law

https://news.bloomberglaw.com/tax-insights-and-commentary/reforming-estate-tax-would-pave-way-for-equitable-tax-landscape

andrew, to law
@andrew@esq.social avatar

Preaching to the choir, I guess, but all the people (Andrew Sullivan, etc.) that are raising a hue and cry about the focus on diversity in the Ivy League seem to be ignoring the fact that white males remain the dominant demographic.

Harvard: https://datausa.io/profile/university/harvard-university

Penn: https://datausa.io/profile/university/university-of-pennsylvania

It reminds me of the Obama-coming-for-your-guns nonsense always spewed by someone wearing a gun.

1/x

#lawfedi @law

andrew,
@andrew@esq.social avatar

@law #lawfedi

If these schools are bought and paid for by some nefarious group looking to undermine white males, what is happening? Why are they failing so terribly?

The narrative just plods on in the face of simple facts completely not bearing out the claim. To say nothing of why exactly it would be such a scandal if the claims they're making were true.

I'm convinced they could just report there are no white people at Harvard, and it'd get picked up and run with and never retracted.

andrew, to law
@andrew@esq.social avatar

Hi! Are you a or other professional? Cool, but also, condolences.

We here at https://esq.social want to help. We're a purpose-built instance to provide a home base on the for all you looney tunes.

Join us, won't you? We're nice and we've been around for a year -- which is like a decade in fediverse time.

We also have a -like platform called with about 30 folks popping in and out. I’ll put that link in the next toot.

@law

andrew,
@andrew@esq.social avatar

@law

is kind of like federated or Slack or Discord.

We're hanging out over here, if you want to pop in and say hi:

https://matrix.to/#/#lawgeneral:matrix.esq.social

andrew, to law
@andrew@esq.social avatar

In this week's Insights I wrote about a fun little fraud (if fraud can ever be fun) in the EU involving shipping in a big loop and exploiting input credit refunds for VAT payments never made. Also known as a "carousel" or "missing trader intra-community" fraud.

@law

https://news.bloombergtax.com/tax-insights-and-commentary/week-in-insights-airpods-are-at-center-of-eu-carousel-fraud-case

andrew, to law
@andrew@esq.social avatar

Increasingly I'm finding to be the best of the "normy" social media platforms. is where I have conversations, LinkedIn is where I follow industry trends and try not to become nauseated with the hustle culture nonsense.

I don't see how or really fit in to my mental conceptions of what I want out of social media. But LinkedIn, eh, it serves a purpose.

If any or @law folks are similarly straddling both worlds, look me up.

https://www.linkedin.com/in/aleahey/

andrew,
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@Colarusso @law

FWIW I wish I wasn’t! Thanks for the add 👍

andrew, to law
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This week I wrote about a more niche subject, but one that comes up frequently in my practice -- electronic sales suppression.

HMRC has begun a crackdown on ESS devices in the UK and has adopted an incredibly broad, unworkable definition of same:

"An ESS tool is a piece of software, computer code script or hardware. It allows a business to hide or reduce the value of individual transactions on its electronic sales records.”

Excel would qualify.

@law

https://news.bloomberglaw.com/tax-insights-and-commentary/uk-electronic-sales-suppression-crackdown-shows-what-not-to-do

andrew, to law
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In this Week in Insights, I vainly attempt to wave the yellow flag (I'm made to understand this means caution) on the coming April 2024 tax credit cliff.

"The landscape is shifting once more for electric vehicle incentives. We’ve been sounding the alarm on this for more than a year, and now the deadline is upon us—on April 18, 2024, only a handful of EVs will still qualify for the full $7,500 federal EV tax credit.”

@law

https://news.bloombergtax.com/tax-insights-and-commentary/week-in-insights-ev-tax-credits-are-heading-for-a-cliff-again

andrew, to law
@andrew@esq.social avatar

Thanksgiving 2023 - Abraham Lincoln Pardons a Turkey and the Proclamation

An introduction to Lincoln's Thanksgiving Proclamation and a brief contextualizing of Old Abe's unwillingness to kill a turkey.

@law

https://www.minimumcomp.com/p/thanksgiving-2023-abraham-lincoln

andrew, to law
@andrew@esq.social avatar

I had occasion to talk about this in class the other day, and its one of those stories I frequently forget the details of.

The extent to which the landscape re-congealed to nearly pre-1982 breakup levels by the early 2000s is a pretty compelling argument for the need for ongoing enforcement.

@law

https://www.minimumcomp.com/p/mon-1120-wisconsin-electoral-drama

andrew,
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@Eddiethebulldog @law

Interesting! I was unaware of this. I will have to look in to this, thank you.

andrew,
@andrew@esq.social avatar

@Eddiethebulldog @law

Awesome, thank you!!

andrew, to law
@andrew@esq.social avatar

“When intertwined with public funding through state and federal tax incentives, the practice of movie and television write-downs represents a troubling exploitation of taxpayer funds. Coupled with rapidly expanding state tax incentives, it represents a multibillion-dollar Rube Goldberg machine that culminates in a nickel being pulled from your pocket, strapped to an Acme rocket, and fired directly into the bank accounts of movie studios.”

@law

https://news.bloombergtax.com/tax-insights-and-commentary/movie-tax-write-downs-help-studios-profit-at-publics-expense

andrew,
@andrew@esq.social avatar

@opendna @law

Nope, you're not wrong. The counter-counterargument falls down when you introduce data that suggests the spending isn't $3 -- productions largely operate like a traveling circus, they bring their labor and stuff in, shoot the movie, and mosey on (even when they may maintain a physical presence in the form of a studio lot, etc.).

Same argument and data as is to be found regarding public funding for sporting venues. TLDR: The public ROI isn't there.

andrew,
@andrew@esq.social avatar

@opendna @law

The chain breaks here because studios typically owe very little in state taxes -- so much so that they don't even use the credits they receive from (for instance GA) to offset their own taxes. They sell them to folks that have enough of a bill to make use of them in full.

More info in one of the links I included in the column, but didn't have room to more fully expound upon: https://www.artsatl.org/guest-essay-five-reasons-why-georgia-should-yell-cut-on-film-tax-credit/

andrew, to law
@andrew@esq.social avatar

On this day in history Abraham delivered the .

He wasn't the main speaker that day, Edward Everett was. He spoke for 2 hours about the significance of the battle. Lincoln's address was only 10 sentences and he delivered it so quickly there are no photographs of him speaking.

Interestingly, the speech itself speaks to the insignificance of anything he could say that day. And yet the speech is unquestionably more well-known than the battle.

@law

1/2

andrew,
@andrew@esq.social avatar

may have based the address on Pericle's Funeral Oration, which has some similarities. But, just as with the battle and battlefield, Lincoln's address has proved more enduring -- at least over the last 160 years.

Immediately upon sitting down, Lincoln was said to have commented to a friend that the speech was a flop -- "that speech won't scour."

He was wrong.

2/2

@law

andrew,
@andrew@esq.social avatar

@law

As long as I'm prattling on about Lincoln -- I've always been a big fan of the address but found his 2nd Inaugural more moving and impactful:

"Yet, if God wills that it continue until all the wealth piled by the bondsman's 250 of unrequited toil shall be sunk and until every drop of blood drawn with the lash shall be paid by another drawn with the sword as was said three thousand years ago so still it must be said 'the judgments of the Lord are true and righteous altogether.’”

andrew,
@andrew@esq.social avatar

@josh @APBBlue @law

Political bias, only explanation.

andrew, to law
@andrew@esq.social avatar

This week for Insights I wrote about the new "junk food law" in that carries with it an interesting ultra-processed food tax. The goal is to use the revenue generated by said tax to subsidize healthier options. The system means it would result in the prices on healthy options at the shelf being lower. Pretty cool.

It will target ultra-processed foods with an additional 10% surcharge, which will increase to 20% in ’25.

@law

https://news.bloombergtax.com/tax-insights-and-commentary/week-in-insights-colombias-junk-food-tax-creates-opportunities

andrew, to law
@andrew@esq.social avatar

Fri 11/17 - Wall Street Firms Build Practices, Louisville Breonna Taylor Mistrial, Macy*s PAGA to 9th Circuit and CA Bar Passes AI Guidelines

We have Wall Street firms building out diversity, equity and inclusion practices, a mistrial in Louisville civil rights trial against Breonna Taylor shooter, Macy*s brings PAGA back to 9th circuit, and the bar passes guidelines for use and billing of AI.

@law

https://www.minimumcomp.com/p/fri-1117-wall-street-firms-build

andrew, to law
@andrew@esq.social avatar

“This day in legal history, November 16, 1973, President Nixon signed the Trans-Alaska Pipeline Authorization Act. This Act marked a significant shift in the nation's approach to energy resource development and environmental policy. By sanctioning the construction of an 800-mile oil pipeline from Prudhoe Bay to Valdez, the Act aimed to alleviate the 1973 oil crisis by tapping into the vast oil reserves of Alaska's North Slope.”

@law

https://www.minimumcomp.com/p/thurs-1116-government-hangs-open

andrew, to law
@andrew@esq.social avatar

"On November 14th, in the context of legal history, the story of Ruby Bridges stands out as a pivotal moment in the civil rights movement, particularly in the desegregation of American schools. Born on September 8, 1954, … Ruby Bridges became a symbol of the civil rights movement … when she became the first African American child to integrate an all-white elementary school in the South, specifically William Frantz Elementary School in New Orleans.”

@law

https://www.minimumcomp.com/p/tues-1113-scotus-code-of-ethics-special

andrew, to law
@andrew@esq.social avatar

Tues 11/14 - SCOTUS "Code" "of" "Ethics," Special Counsel Says Trump Wants a Carnival, BK Judge Ethics Fallout, NYC Real Estate Brokerage Sued and Amazon <3s Casino Apps

adopts a nonbinding, voluntary, code of ethics, Special counsel says is trying to start a carnival in court, more bankruptcy judge ethics fallout, real estate brokerages and sued.

@law

https://www.minimumcomp.com/p/tues-1113-scotus-code-of-ethics-special

andrew, to law
@andrew@esq.social avatar

In this weeks column I outline the utter failure the has been from the perspective of combatting offshoring of profits and suggest a simple alternative.

“As the calendar flips over to 2024, the TCJA’s shortcomings are laid bare—but there’s a potential path forward in the form of a global minimum tax. It won’t get rid of offshoring, but it reimagines tax policy toward a recognition of a global, interlinked system of policies.”

@law

andrew, to law
@andrew@esq.social avatar

SCOTUS adopting a self-imposed ethics code is not the same as being subject to a real ethics code. This is theater. Bad theater.

Community theater where the show they have on the sign isn't what you see and there is gum on your seat and the people on stage spit on you and when you stand up and demand an apology they put the big light on you and everyone laughs and your shoes fall off when you try to run out of the building.

Or something.

@law

https://www.supremecourt.gov/about/Code-of-Conduct-for-Justices_November_13_2023.pdf

andrew, to law
@andrew@esq.social avatar

Mon 11/13 - Fortnite Dance Copyright Suit, ASC 606 Here to Stay, Trump Wants TV Cameras in Courtroom and CA Bar Passage is Down

We have a choreography suit revived, revenue rules are a hassle but no changes are coming, wants TV cameras in the courtroom, and the CA bar passage rate takes a down turn.

@law

https://www.minimumcomp.com/p/mon-1113-fortnite-dance-copyright

andrew, to law
@andrew@esq.social avatar

Semi regular reminder to #lawfedi #lawyer and #attorney or other #legal adjacent professionals or academics: we are over here at https://esq.social running a #Mastodon instance for you.

Our Local Timeline is hopping. Come join us!

@law

andrew, to law
@andrew@esq.social avatar

Does any #lawfedi folk know, or have a contact that would know, about rules/restrictions regarding using a "granny cam" in a nursing or rehab facility? Reckon its state-specific, this would be New Jersey for what its worth.

Thanks!

#lawfedi @law

andrew,
@andrew@esq.social avatar

@kcdixon @law

Yeah I kind of figured. Here it seems you can rent them from the state, so an outright ban seems unlikely.

andrew, to law
@andrew@esq.social avatar

Weds 11/8 - Big Law Bonus, Cravath Nonequity Partnership, Ivanka to Testify, WeWork Bankruptcy, Amazon Antitrust Defense Preview and Column on Estate Tax and George Steinbrenner

bonus season begins, adds a nonequity partner tier, to testify in trial, wants to restructure, previews its antitrust defense plan and a column on the estate tax.

@law

https://www.minimumcomp.com/p/weds-118-big-law-bonus-cravath-nonequity

andrew, to law
@andrew@esq.social avatar

I managed to (albeit obliquely) reference and in my column this week on the federal estate tax. High water mark, career-wise.

"Steinbrenner died in 2010 during a period where there was no federal estate tax. The rate was 45% a year prior and 55% the year after. Steinbrenner saved his inheritor sons at least $495 million dollars.

...

A more speculative investment, such as Apple Inc., would see their holdings balloon to $28 billion.”

@law

https://news.bloomberglaw.com/tax-insights-and-commentary/steinbrenners-legacy-shows-importance-of-federal-estate-tax

andrew, to law
@andrew@esq.social avatar

"On this day in legal history, November 6, 1917, New York state adopted a state constitutional amendment granting the vote to women.

...

Amendment 1, a legislatively referred constitutional amendment, granted women equal voting rights in the state. This landmark decision was the culmination of nearly seven decades of tireless advocacy since the first women’s rights convention in Seneca Falls, New York, in 1848​."

@law

https://www.minimumcomp.com/p/mon-116-stroock-goes-kaboom-scotus

andrew, to law
@andrew@esq.social avatar

Fri 11/3 - SBF Guilty, Eastman Culpable, NASCAR Biased Against White Men (??), Eric Trump to Face More Tough Questions and Giuliani Wants His License Back

We have guilty (no way!), found preliminarily culpable before bar, accused of bias against white men, Eric to face more tough questions and wants his DC bar license back.

@law

https://www.minimumcomp.com/p/fri-113-sbf-guilty-eastman-culpable

andrew,
@andrew@esq.social avatar

@law

Also ...

"On this day in legal history, we have another dark period in United States Supreme Court history–on November 3, 1884, the Supreme Court ruled in Elk v. Wilkins that John Elk, a Winnebago man, was not a citizen entitled to protection of the 14th and 15th Amendments of the US constitution.”

andrew,
@andrew@esq.social avatar

@GregSergienko @law

😬

andrew, to law
@andrew@esq.social avatar

Thurs 11/2 - DJTJ Says He Didn't Do Nuttin', Judges Defeat Misconduct Claim, Dunkin' Settles Vapin' Donuts Case and Tesla Wins its First Autopilot Suit

We have Donald Jr. claiming a minor role in Dad’s company, judges defeat misconduct claims in racist accusation, ’ settles “Vapin’ Donuts” case and wins its first ‘Autopilot’ suit.

@law

https://www.minimumcomp.com/p/thurs-112-djtj-says-he-didnt-do-nuttin

andrew, to law
@andrew@esq.social avatar

Weds 11/1 - "Trump Too Small," SBF Closing Arguments, DJTJ to Testify, and New Bar Exam Catches on

In today's episode we have #SCOTUS taking up “Trump Too Small” #trademark claim, #SBF case heads to closing arguments, DJTJ to testify in his father’s trial, and the NextGen bar exam gains traction kind of.

#lawfedi @law

https://www.minimumcomp.com/p/weds-111-trump-too-small-sbf-closing

andrew, to law
@andrew@esq.social avatar

should get out of the anti-Direct File business (read: stop being evil) and start lobbying for an open .

“Ultimately, the Direct File program is a call for this industry to evolve. It necessitates a reimagining of value proposition to align with taxpayers’ evolving needs and expectations. But it remains an open question whether these companies are up to the challenge."

@law

https://news.bloomberglaw.com/tax-insights-and-commentary/intuit-and-others-should-use-ai-to-complement-irs-direct-file

andrew, to law
@andrew@esq.social avatar

Mon 10/30 - SCOTUS Considering who can be Blocked, Biden Exec. Order on AI, Trump Ballot Disqual. in CO, CA Assault Rifle ban Upheld and UAW Wins big

considering who public officials can block on social media, Biden executive order on , ’s ballot disqualification trial in , appeals court upholds assault rifle ban, wins big.

@law

https://www.minimumcomp.com/p/mon-1030-scotus-considering-who-can

andrew, to law
@andrew@esq.social avatar

Hey , if you're prepping for the week ahead consider joining us on -- which can be viewed as federated Slack or Discord.

We have a relatively active and topic channel, but we're always looking for new voices.

https://matrix.to/#/#lawgeneral:matrix.esq.social

@law

andrew,
@andrew@esq.social avatar

@law

FWIW I suggest the app for Matrix. It has both a web version and an "app" (mobile/Windows/macOS/iPadOS/etc.) version. You can preview our main room here:

https://app.element.io/#/room/#lawgeneral:matrix.esq.social

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