Taxation Law Books

The telephone policy wars continue unabated, with conflicting experts (and "experts") seemingly available to testify on most topics. This book is notable as a collaboration between two prominent authors who fall on opposing sides -- Baumol (usually for the long distance competitors), and Sidak (usually for the local phone companies). Although nearly a decade old (and thus a bit long in the tooth regarding the rapid changes in the industry), its economics are still valid, and clearly explained. This volume belongs on the bookshelf of anyone with an academic or professional interest in the economics of the telephone industry, or its regulation.

An excellent and well organized compendium of employee compensation criteria . This should be in the legal or HR department of every firm both for the book's coverage of tax significance and for compensation creativity schemes.

A MUST HAVE FOR ANY CPA OR ATTORNEY DOING ESTATE PLANNING

Dr. Jarnigan was my accounting professor at Wichita State University. I have used past editions of this guide also. He is an extremely knowledgeable instructor with an exceptional understanding of GAAP and this comes across very clearly in this guide.

I have purchased this book for the last decade and a half. It is great to use in the preparation of returns. I also have used it to meet my states' CPE requirements. I don't think that is possible any longer, but this is still a handy tool.

Other features include a annual update of the changes to the prior year's code and reg, and a calender of important date to plan preparation and filing dates.

The MTG references the larger loose leaf service that CCH sells too. The MTG can be used without the other service which can be found in some of the larger libraries if further research is required.

Seasoned expert in international economics Gary Clyde Hufbauer and former tax attorney Ariel Assa present US Taxation of Foreign Income, a serious-minded and scholarly look at America's current tax policy toward international firms. Taking the stand that the current US tax system is highly unfavorable to international firms, and therefore weighing down US leadership of the global economy, US Taxation of Foreign Income discusses the policy's flaws and ways it can be improved. In particular, a change toward a territorial system is recommended, with the goal of encouraging multinational enterprises to locate both headquarters activities and high-technology production in the United States. Another suggestion involves a new take on taxing royalty and fee income earned abroad, so that high-technology production in the United States is not as heavily penalized as compared to production abroad. Most expansive of all is the proposal that the United States take a stand in crafting a cooperative international system that would reduce the surreptitious under reporting of foreign portfolio income. The authors estimate that these proposed tax reforms will literally pay for themselves, allowing more tax revenue to be garnered than the present system and possibly opening the door for other forms of business tax relief. A studious, heavily researched assessment, highly recommended especially for anyone involved in crafting American tax policy.

In this volume the authors do what no other authors have done before. They have made antitrust law and economics accessible to anyone with no understanding of economics and only a moderate understanding of law. The authors cover conspriracies in restraint of trade, monopolization, price discrimination and mergers. By including an economic foundation they are able to present a concise explantion of the philosophical underpinnings of the current debates about the usefulness of antitrust law. This is a balanced, accessible and informative treatment of an very complex area of law.

Considering I am the lead author, Anthony. I was actually surprised to see it here for sale. Anyway, this was my first publication and I hope you find it informative.

When I was trying to plan one of my clients transactions within EU it help me to figure out the whole screen

This book is a nice overview of some of the foreseeable legal issues of virtual worlds. I attended a seminar hosted by the author, Benjamin Duranske, that was sponsored by the American Bar Association. The "session" I attended was in second life in the ABA building. You guessed it, I am a lawyer. As such, the case law in the appendixes was, for me, interesting reading.

Executive Summary: The user agreement, aka terms of service (TOS), governs all (for now). The service providers can pretty much do what they want with your account as long as they don't violate their TOS. On the other hand, the service providers govern their virtual worlds as little as possible because they don't make money from governance. They see it as customer support and retention. Legal arguments aren't the best recourse because the customer support reps are judge and jury.

Repeating: If you have an issue in world, read the TOS and complain to the service provider. If you have an issue with a service provider, read the TOS and then complain to the service provider. Any competent lawyer representing you in such a dispute would do exactly that. Finally, the courts are not well equipped to deal with virtual world issues. They would first look at venue (can this court properly hear this case?) which is an open subject that is not really addressed in the book. If the court has venue, then the first thing that is likely to happen is a detailed parsing of ... the TOS.

As to the target audience, non-lawyers can certainly get a lot out of the book. It is published by the ABA though and it isn't exactly a light summer read. The chapters are mostly arranged along the lines of legal subjects without going deep into any one. What I liked is that the book hints at where to look to perform certain functions like copyrighting/trademarking an avatar.

Regardless, what surprises me most is the sheer magnitude of legal issues arising in virtual worlds. At first I thought it would be mostly intellectual property type stuff. Not even close. The only real world thing that doesn't seem to have a close analogy is homicide. Avatars are possessions and aren't (yet) sentient. Also, avatars respawn and the most they suffer, in certain worlds, is damaged possessions, reputation, and maybe reduced XP. Besides, corpse looting is really just robbery that is intentionally part of certain games.

Basically, as soon as real people exchange real money all aspects of the law seem to come into play. Contracts, taxes, torts, etc. Even employment law, although the book doesn't address employment law. The subjects that don't really come into play yet are civil and criminal procedure.

Everyone who operates a business that is involved with virtual worlds should be glad that this book was written. As everyone in that situation knows, virtual worlds give rise to a huge number of legal questions, and this book collects those and answers to them all in one place using a writing style that's very readable even for non lawyers like myself.

One thing that I really appreciated about the book is that it describes the degree of certainty associated with different topics. For example, each chapter ends with a section on "open questions" relating to the subject of the chapter, whereas there are other places where the text states very definitively that a given thing occurring in a virtual world would or would not be treated exactly the same way as elsewhere on the Web or in the physical world.

Another thing that I appreciated about the book was how clearly it is written. While it does include case law, etc. that is likely to be of intellectual interest to lawyers specializing in virtual law, it also includes a lot of very practical and accessible information for those of us who have business interests in virtual worlds.

I think it will be particularly useful to three groups of people. First, it will provide a lot of information for people running in world only businesses for which legal advice is probably prohibitively expensive. Second, it will provide small and medium size businesses operating in virtual worlds enough of an understanding of the issues to judge when it's likely to be cost-effective to seek out specialized legal advice and when it's not. Third, I think it will be helpful to the large companies operating in virtual worlds. Many of them have their own legal staff, but they are often are unfamiliar with virtual worlds. This book will help them get up to speed quickly (and avoid slowing down their companies virtual world initiatives).

I am in the second category, and I already feel I got my money's worth from the book in terms of not having to pay for unnecessary legal advice and / or worry that I should be checking things with a lawyer (particularly given that currently most "regular" lawyers are not very knowledgeable about virtual worlds). All in all, I found this book to be extremely helpful on a first read, and it's one I am sure I will refer back to in the future.

The one topic I wish would have received greater attention in the book is jurisdiction since so much interaction in virtual worlds involves people in different countries.