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ON THE COVER OF THE ROLLING STONE (L'AUDIENCE, C'EST MOI)

December 15, 2004

What we do for a living won't make us famous, if we're lucky. What small measure of fame we get from doing the Tax Update, we'll take.

Tax Analysts mentions the Tax Update in a survey of the (tiny) tax blogosphere this week. The have kindly allowed us to post it. Click "read more" for the article.

Tax Bloggers Use Internet to Widen Tax Policy Appeal

Tax Notes, Dec. 13, 2004, p. 1498
105 Tax Notes 1498 (Dec. 13, 2004)

By Warren Rojas -- warrenr@tax.org

Looking to expand tax policy talk beyond the pages of law reviews or
academic tomes, a group of tax enthusiasts is infiltrating the
"blogosphere" -- an Internet world dominated by armchair journalists with
opinions on just about everything -- to vet contemporary tax topics.

Part diary, part discussion, Web logs -- "blogs" for short -- have given
ordinary Web surfers a chance to add their two cents to Internet discourse.
Although blogs can run the gamut from tracking entertainment gossip to
dissecting the latest Supreme Court decisions, mainstream media and even
the political parties are beginning to notice them. Both Democrats and
Republicans invited bloggers to cover their conventions this year.

Tax professors and practitioners from across the country are betting the
buzz will help draw average citizens into tax policy discussions -- a hope
that saw the establishment of four tax blogs in 2004 alone.

Atop the Cyber Soapbox

Victor Fleischer, a UCLA law professor, and Jeffrey Kahn, a Santa Clara
University law professor, made a case for tax blogging in their 2003
working paper "A Taxing Blog: The Uneasy Case for Blogging Taxation," Tax
Notes, Sept. 15, 2003, p. 1441. The primer also served as the manifesto for
their short-lived blog, A Taxing Blog (http://taxpolicy.blogspot.com/), a
discussion forum Kahn said helped keep readers and commentators on alert.

"It really forced me to kind of keep track of what's going on and think
about some of the positions that were floating out there . . . which is
easy to kind of fall behind when you're kind of stuck behind the ivy
walls," Kahn said.

Fleischer said he wanted to court tax professors and policymakers with the
site, while Kahn said he liked to mine traditional news outlets for content
rather than delve into specific code sections.

"Tax is discussed, basically every day, whether people know it or not. So
we generally had enough material just going through the newspaper," Kahn
said.

They said they had no choice but to shelve the blog after seven months when
the time commitment became overwhelming. "Academics don't recognize this as
scholarship yet," Fleischer said. "So as an untenured professor, I need to
worry about what's going into my tenure file."

James Edward Maule, a Villanova University tax law professor, credited his
dean with helping to start the Mauled Again site (
http://mauledagain.blogspot.com/). Maule said that although some colleagues
appear to shun unconventional teaching techniques and new media outlets, he
and the dean recognized that tax blogging's near- instantaneous ability to
network makes it an invaluable alternative to traditional scholarship.

"With the blog, I can react very quickly and put it out there. People can
see it and react, you get comments, you learn from it," he said. "It's sort
of like letting people watch the scientist work in the lab."

Maule's musings have attracted an audience that he says ranges from former
students to ordinary taxpayers looking to get a better grasp on complex tax
rules.

"I'm writing for people that want to understand what's behind the scenes
with tax law," Maule told Tax Analysts, adding that he works to boil down
every tax topic as if he were explaining it to a family member.

Paul L. Caron, a University of Cincinnati tax law professor, remains the
undisputed champion of tax blogging. His TaxProf Blog (
http://taxprof.typepad.com/) has attracted about 1,500 people per day since
April 15.

Caron told Tax Analysts that his blog, which blends reference tools with
announcements about developing tax issues and upcoming conferences, has
helped fulfill a boyhood dream of covering the Red Sox for The Boston Globe
-- a mission he says he now applies to mapping the tax landscape. Caron
claims the blog also reiterates earlier research themes wherein he warned
colleagues about the disconnect between tax and other legal scholars.

"Tax is an area where . . . there's a lot that tax professors can learn
from tax lawyers, and vice versa," he said, adding that he hopes any of the
almost three dozen other law-related blogs he is developing will see
similar success.

Arkansas CPA Kerry M. Kerstetter has been contributing to cyberspace since
late 2000 under the guise of the Tax Guru (http://www.taxguru.net/), a
pseudonym created for the news and troubleshooting wire he started to help
people cope with the headaches that arise from the tax code.

"I work with the IRS and real-life clients every day and see how it fits,"
Kerstetter said.

Joe Kristan, an Iowa CPA and Roth and Co. shareholder, has built his Tax
Update (http://www.rothcpa.com/taxupdates.php/) readership by tracking down
offbeat tax stories and offering pertinent tax lessons.

"Ultimately my audience is me. So I'm just trying to keep it interesting,"
he told Tax Analysts. Kristan said that apart from keeping him plugged into
the tax world, the blog is also a low-cost marketing tool for the firm.

"Nobody else is doing it . . [so] it makes us stand out a little bit,"
Kristan said.

Prof. Clarissa C. Potter (http://actax.blogspot.com/) of Georgetown
University Law Center believes the tax blogosphere is already in danger of
being snuffed out.

"I'm not sure that tax really supports very many blogs. It's something that
a lot of people have an interest in . . . but you can't make very many
interesting casual observations about tax," she said. "It's high-intensity,
very detail-oriented, or it's extremely casual, in which case one or two
people can do a really good job of sort of covering it."

Caron said that he decided to limit personal opinions in his own posts and
that by adhering to a more unbiased mission, he hopes to make his site a
permanent fixture.

"Jim Maule has a certain sort of voice, and [New York University tax law
professor Daniel N.] Shaviro (http://danshaviro.blogspot.com/) has a
certain voice . . . but those folks aren't trying to be the tax blog of
record, if you will," Caron said. "And that's what we're trying to be."

While most tax bloggers appear to share resources and freely redirect
readers from one site to another, their varied audiences and personalities
have helped them open doors to different parts of the tax world.

Dropping Knowledge

Fleischer said one of the highlights of his brief blogging career involved
helping an unnamed congressman draft his reelection tax themes. Although
the exchange wasn't quite an effort to redesign the tax code, Fleischer
said he did get a chance to discuss broader reform issues.

Kahn said replies from the public were always appreciated, but he was
especially pleased when feedback arrived from Treasury or Capitol Hill.

"It was never like 'You saved the day,' or 'We'll get it fixed.' But
comments, at least a few times, of, you know, 'That's a good thing. I'll
mention it to somebody,'" Kahn said. "So I always felt like something was
getting done."

Kahn said he was not as fond of messages that came in from the tax
protester crowd after he dismissed the movement as a frivolous enterprise.
"Most of the e-mails I got were more interested in actual discussion. These
were personal attacks," he said.

Kristan said that because of the blog's hometown scope, national attention
has been harder to come by. He said that for now he takes comfort in
knowing that the local director of revenue and finance tracks the Roth
site, because it could provide Kristan with an in at City Hall.

According to Caron, congressional staffers often send breaking news items,
including new statutory language and reports from the Joint Committee on
Taxation, directly to the site. He suggested that by posting tax-centric
articles and studies from the social science research network alongside
general-interest blurbs on topics like the income tax consequences of the
Oprah Winfrey car giveaway, the site has also helped advance many tax
stories that might otherwise go unnoticed by the media.

"I think it has generated discussion and interest elsewhere," Caron said.

Kerstetter couldn't recall any legislative triumphs his blog might have
assisted, but said he had managed to attract the attention of IRS auditors
he once worked with. The IRS agents weigh in occasionally, but Kerstetter
told Tax Analysts he doubts they would ever let their true opinions be
known -- something many tax bloggers would like to see.

Rounding Up Recruits

"It would be just tremendous if an IRS agent were to do an anonymous blog
and just sort of give an idea of what life looks like from the inside,"
Kristan said.

Kristan still hopes that former policymakers such as Pamela F. Olson,
former Treasury assistant secretary for tax policy, or B. John Williams
Jr., former IRS chief counsel, will share their perspectives.

Kerstetter pressed for Treasury to host a comment board or blog allowing
practitioners to provide feedback on complicated regulations or difficult
tax topics. Kerstetter pointed to the release of the new Schedule M-3
instructions as a good test case for the forum. "There'll be a lot of
discussion and feedback on that," he said. "But you don't really see it
unless you request the paperwork."

Potter said that although more congressional tax gossip would be
appreciated, she'd prefer to see a tax lobbyist join the blogosphere. She
said, however, that the inside-Washington set would be reluctant to
broadcast their dealings.

"People don't do it [lobbying] just because they love it. They do it to
make money," she said. "And all that information . . . that's dollars."

Maule suggested more joint blogs, reasoning that multiple viewpoints help
provide more insight and alleviate the time constraints on the blog
authors. He also encouraged the tax law community to use blogs to
reenergize universities' law reviews.

Maule said he thinks blogs will evolve. "You'll be able to see scholarship
evolve in different forms," he said.

Kahn agreed, saying he'd like to see Duke law professor Lawrence A.
Zelenak, Yale law professor Michael J. Graetz, and University of Chicago
law professor David A. Weisbach add their voices to the growing
blogosphere.

"These are just people that I like to read, and I'd be interested to see
their daily thoughts," Kahn said.

Warren Rojas
Tax Notes investigative reporter
703-533-4603 Work
wrojas@tax.org

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