Curriculum Guide · Courses

Professors Travis Greaves and Alina Marshall

LL.M Course 857 (cross-listed) | 2 credit hours

This course will teach you about the tax penalties that transactional and controversy tax practitioners must regularly consider, and provide you with a general background on tax opinions including their use in defending against penalties. Transactional tax advisors need to consider penalties when structuring deals in order to adequately represent their clients and to satisfy their own professional obligations. Transactional tax advisors are often called upon to prepare opinion letters. Prudent advisors must understand the value of such letters to their clients and their legal and ethical obligations as opining attorneys. Tax controversy attorneys must have a comprehensive understanding of tax penalties and opinion letters to effectively represent clients, whether in settlement negotiations, court or administrative proceedings. These attorneys should be able to identify the range of applicable penalties, address proof convincingly and understand relevant defenses..

Students in this class will examine relevant statutes, regulations and case law. The course will focus on the substantive law, although procedural issues may be discussed briefly. In addition, we anticipate guest speakers from law firms, accounting firms, IRS and/or Tax Court will join us to discuss how tax penalties and tax opinions affect their practice. Penalties addressed will include tax shelter, return preparer, failure to file and failure to pay, accuracy-related, and fraud. Methods of proof and defenses to these penalties are, of course, critical to client representation and will therefore be covered. The discussions of tax opinions will include a review of Circular 230, the various opinion comfort levels, and sample opinion letters.

Prerequisite: Interested J.D. students must have taken Taxation I prior to this course; all LL.M.s are assumed to have taken Taxation I or its equivalent as a prerequisite to the program.