A Very Special Episode

Lawrence A. Zelenak, the Pamela B. Gann Professor of Law at Duke University School of Law, shares his findings from watching dozens of hours of tax-related sitcom episodes.

For additional coverage, read these articles in Tax Notes:

• Seven-Plus Decades of the Federal Income Tax in Sitcoms: An Update
• Six Decades of the Federal Income Tax in Sitcoms

In the segment, “In the Pages Sneak Peek,” Tax Notes  Federal Editor in Chief Ariel Greenblum talks with Philip Wolf about his new column, A Young Practitioner's Journey.

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Credits
Host: David D. Stewart
Executive Producers: Jasper B. Smith, Faye McCray
Showrunner: Paige Jones
Audio Engineers: Derek Squires, Jordan Parrish
Guest Relations: Nicole White

Transcript

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David Stewart 0:01

Welcome to the podcast. I'm David Stewart, editor in chief of Tax Notes Today International. This week: a very special episode, or as seen on TV for many of us. Television is an escape from reality, especially during turbulent times, but occasionally what's happening in the lives of our favorite TV show characters resembles our own experience. So, of course, the subject of taxes comes up on television. In fact, many times on sitcoms, so much so that one professor has cataloged the appearance of taxes and sitcoms in the pages of Tax Notes. Joining me now is Duke Law Professor Lawrence Zelenak. Larry, welcome to the podcast.

Lawrence Zelenak 0:39

Thank you, Dave. Great to be with you. Can you tell listeners a bit about yourself and what brought you to write about taxes and sitcoms? Well, I've been teaching tax in law schools for a long time; I guess since the mid 1980s. And I've always had a pretty strong interest in pop culture, which is, I suppose, a way of saying I've always spent a lot of time watching television. And just kind of randomly, I came across one or two sitcom episodes, and not because I was looking for them, but just because I was watching sitcom episodes, that involve tax . And that made me curious about how many such episodes there might be. And so, must be about 15 years ago now that I started a research project -- it's the kind of project that I'd recommend that professors start only after they have tenure because I don't think you're going to get tenure on the basis of a project like this -- looking for as many tax-related sitcom episodes as I could find. And it was-- it involved research techniques that I'd never learned in law school.

David Stewart 1:37

What sort of techniques did you have to employ for this?

Lawrence Zelenak 1:39

Oh my gosh. It was kind of everything. I think if I was doing it now, it would be somewhat easier. I think there's more information online now about such things than there was then. The single best source was a website called tv .com , which had very brief one or two-sentence plot descriptions of almost every sitcom episode ever. The problem was that for some reason, those plot descriptions were opaque to Google, so you couldn't just ask Google to find all of them automatically for you. You had to go sort of manually through every episode description of every show you were interested in . So if it occurred to me, for example, "Hey, I bet there's a, there might be a tax episode in 'All in the Family,'" you had to go through all of those to find it . Then of course, that was just the first step because that would alert me to the existence of the episode, but it wouldn't mean I could find the episode . So again, most of these were available for streaming now, but it was harder than, and this was kind of pre-streaming. Some were available on DVDs. A lot weren't. And I discovered that the three great archives were the Library of Congress, the radio and television archives in New York, and the UCLA Film & Television Library, and made trips to all three of those, which was a lot of fun. This all sounds so antediluvian. You could do all of this at home from your computer now, but I was traveling all over the country watching episodes on tape and it was great. I loved the project, but I knew that the research tools were sufficiently insufficient, that I was going to miss things. And so once I published the first survey in 2007 of all the, I think, it was 89 episodes that I was able to find by that point, research has gotten a lot easier since then. Not only because the tools have gotten better, but because now people tell me. I'll get an email every so often, "Hey, did you know you missed this episode?" Or, "This one just came out!" That's been great. One other thing I should mention is that the one time I really hit a gold mine. There was something I think it was called Old Time Radio that had actually on its own collected on a disc about two dozen radio episodes, tax-related sitcom radio episodes. So that sort of happened all once .

David Stewart 3:46

So your list of sitcoms goes all the way back to the 40s and the radio plays. Is there some sort of history lesson we can learn from it?

Lawrence Zelenak 3:53

Well, the really interesting historical accident, Dave, is that the income tax became a mass tax that applied to most of the population only in World War II. And it existed of course since 1913, but between 1913 and the early 1940s, usually it applied to only about five or 10 percent of the population, which made it maybe not that good a topic for pop culture. Sitcoms emerged on radio in the very late 1930s . I think usually the first sitcom show is Eldridge Family, which debuted in 1939. And so within just a very, very few years, we had the income tax emerging as a mass tax and sitcoms emerging at almost exactly the same time. And from that very beginning, the sitcoms have provided commentary on the income tax. So we have a perfect chronological match between these two phenomenon and it's made for some really interesting sitcom episodes.

David Stewart 4:49

So how much time did you really devote to this passion project of yours?

Lawrence Zelenak 4:53

Oh, gosh. Well, just to watch and listen to all the episodes would be about 50 hours, or maybe a little less because of the ads. A hundred episodes times half an hour each. I wasn't billing this to a anyone, so I didn't keep track, but it was certainly hundreds and hundreds of hours, but it was a labor of love. And a lot of the shows are really good, even apart from the tax angles. It was not unpleasant.

David Stewart 5:14

So how are taxes coming up in these otherwise fun shows? I mean, taxes are fun of course, but can you give some examples?

Lawrence Zelenak 5:23

Uh, sure. So I suppose that two ways of categorizing the shows are at what stage in the tax process that the show enters and the other is what particular substantive tax issues are involved. On the process side, it's almost entirely two different stages, and this is surprising. One is tax return preparation. And the other is audits, which by the way, I have to say that the audit rate on television is orders of magnitude higher. But they're almost all either tax return preparation shows or audit shows for kind of obvious reasons. I mean, in that connection, one thing that I think is interesting is individual federal income tax over this timeframe we're talking about, which is basically since 1940 on, it has most of the time raised about half of all of the federal tax revenue. And then if you throw in state tax revenue altogether, of all the taxes people pay, federal individual income taxes is significantly less than half. But if you were arriving from another planet -- we'll get to 3rd Rock from the Sun later -- but trying to figure out what the U.S. income tax system was like from watching sitcoms, you would conclude that the only tax that existed was the federal individual income tax. And the reason I think pretty clearly is because it requires so much more taxpayer participation than any of the other taxes. The other way you can sort of categorize the shows is not the process at which they are investigating, but rather the substantive tax issue. And I'd say there's three things that mostly come up there. This won't surprise anybody. One is income inclusions, and there's sort of substantive issues about whether windfalls are taxable that comes up, whether in-kind income is taxable. There's also what you might call cheating issues, whether something is reported to the IRS by the third-party payer, and whether or not you should report it on your return if you think the IRS doesn't know about it. A lot of deduction issues. Pretty much every deduction that would occur to you as a widespread deduction comes up in the sitcoms. So there are shows involving the alimony deduction, shows involving the charitable deduction, shows involving business expense deduction, and so on. Another thing that comes up a lot is illegitimate refund. Given that a lot of people's main sort of direct interaction with the IRS is not paying taxes because those are withheld automatically, but rather the IRS sends you a check. Not surprisingly, there are a lot of episodes where people are trying to take advantage of that to get bigger checks from the government than they should . So that's a third category.

David Stewart 7:52

You've been cataloging these for many years. Have you noticed any sort of change over time of the way taxes show up in these episodes?

Lawrence Zelenak 7:58

Yeah. I think the biggest change over time is that in the 1940s and 1950s -- to use my term, not a term that ever shows up in the shows: fiscal citizenship was a really big deal. That is, the shows talked a lot about how Justice Holmes famously said; it's actually etched over the IRS 1111 Constitution Avenue building in Washington, D. C. "Taxes are the price we pay for a civilized society." That came out in a lot of the 1940s and 1950s sitcom episodes. There's an Ozzie and Harriet radio show from the late 1940s where Ozzie is about to mail his income tax return. And he's been not too happy while he was preparing it, but a neighborhood girl who's been learning civics in school , sees him at the mailbox and she says, "Oh, there you are about to file your tax return, Mr. Nelson. You're happy to do it. No grumbling from you. You say 'Here it is, Uncle Sam. Take it. There's a lot more where that came from.' You're a hundred million Americans , Mr. Nelson." And there's a laugh after that from the laugh track because she's obviously been over the top. But at the same time, it seems pretty seriously intended as well. There's a Honeymooners episode, a Jackie Gleason sitcom from the early 1950s, where he complains as he is filling out his tax return because of how complicated it is, which by the way, is another thing we can talk about. But at the end of the show, he says, "You know, I didn't, you know, all that bad stuff I said about taxes. We should be happy to pay taxes. We're living in the greatest country in the world." There's really a lot of that in the 50s, going up to the early 1960s. There's also sort of in connection with that two different episodes. One from the late 50s called, "Hey Genie" involving a Scottish immigrant. And then another, from the early 1960s, the Bill Dana Show involving a Mexican immigrant , both of whom decided that their income tax liability is too small given how great a privilege it is to be able to live in this wonderful country. And I think the later show probably stole the plot from the first one, but still. And they both decide that they need to send in more than their actual tax liability as a tip to the federal government because they appreciate the privilege of living in the United States so much. That pretty much disappears, I'd say by the 1970s. It comes back kind of oddly in 2006 in a My Name is Earl episode, where the sort of punchline of the series -- not joke punchline -- of the whole episode is that tax paying is as much a privilege as an obligation because of the things government does for the citizens. But that theme almost disappears. I suppose the other big change is exemplified by what I think of as the three great working class sitcoms. You might have to throw The Simpsons in as a fourth. But I can say that the three great live action working class sitcoms anyway. The Honeymooners in the 1950s. There's actually two tax episodes, and in both of them Ralph is just scrupulously honest. In the second one from 1956 called "The Worry Wart," he realizes belatedly that he hasn't included some really minor types of income, mostly in-kind small value prizes, because it hadn't occurred to him that in-kind small value prizes were income. But he decides he wants to report it because he would never cheat the government. And then there's an episode of All in the Family called "Archie's Fraud" -- and it gives away the plot-- from the early 1970s, where Archie is exposed in front of his family as having driven a taxi on the weekends for $700 or $800 worth of tips that he didn't report. And although Archie cheats, which Ralph never would have done, that the rest of the family, including Edith, who, dingbat though she may be, is the moral compass of the show, is so scandalized by this that everybody persuades Archie that he needs to go down to the IRS office and basically confess. And coming up finally to a Roseanne episode from 1990 called "April Fool's Day," in which Dan and Roseanne are preparing their tax return on April 15. They know that she earned several hundred dollars selling magazine subscriptions during the year. They want to report that only if the government knows about it. Then they end up going down to the IRS office because this is just slightly pre-internet and they can't get through on phone. And they finally find out that the amount was small enough that there wouldn't have been a 1099. So they decide not to report it. So you have one show, Honeymooners in the 1950s, scrupulously honest taxpayer. Another show, All in the Family, about a decade and a half later. Archie cheats, but everybody else is honest and they shame them and he get his just desserts. To Roseanne where it's not even up for discussion of whether or not you cheat. Obviously you cheat if you think you can get away with it. And while you can find honest and dishonest taxpayers in every time period, because after all, a lot of what these shows are about is bringing out the personalities of the individual characters. So , although Ralph in the 1950s was scrupulously honest, Sergeant Bilko played by Phil Silvers was on another tax episode at the same time being tremendously dishonest. And there's a lovely Simpsons episode from the late 1990s called, "The Trouble with Trillions," which juxtaposes Homer's tax return preparation style, which you can kind of imagine. He says, "How many children do we have? No time to count. I'll just guess seven." With Ned Flanders who decides not to deduct cash register ink from his store, The Leftorium, because he enjoys the smell. And wakes up on the stroke of midnight on January 1 and prepares his tax returns. So you could cite honest and dishonest taxpayers in every period. Nevertheless, I think if you watched all hundred episodes in chronological order, which would be a great way to spend a day or two, I think you would come away with the impression that overall people are a lot more willing to cheat than they used to be. And people are a lot less impressed by the benefits of government or notions of fiscal citizenship than they used to be. Let me throw one more thing at you in that respect about the connection between taxes and the benefits of government. So there's another radio show called Life with Luigi from the mid-1950s, where there's a discussion about, "Well, what do we get in return for taxes?" And the answer is basically, it's an Ned Flanders answer , "Oh, the army, the Navy, the streets, the veterans' support, and so on." And then fast forward to an episode of Ellen DeGeneres's show from the mid-1990s, where a friend asks Ellen's character, "Well, what do we get in return for taxes?" And her answer is, "You know, roads, national parks, PBS. I mean, I don't watch myself, but I've heard good things about Nova." Or better yet maybe back to Ned Flanders in that same episode. As he's preparing his return, one of the boys, Rod and/or Todd ask him, "Daddy, what do we get for paying taxes?" And his answer is "Why, everything. Taxes to pay for the police. They pay for the trees and the sunshine. And let's not forget the people who just don't feel like working, God bless them ." So it's from a very sort of heartfelt notion that taxes are the price to pay for a civilized society, we get to these kind of joking , ironic notions that taxes pay for sunshine and PBS.

David Stewart 14:58

So would it be fair to say that the depictions of people paying their taxes in these shows is sort of a mirror on the way the greater society is looking at these issues?

Lawrence Zelenak 15:06

Oh , I think so. I think you could make a pretty good argument that if you're looking for something in pop culture that sort of holds a mirror up to society, you could do a lot worse than sitcoms. I can't prove this, of course. I can cite other people who have said it, but none of us can really improve it. But yeah, I think sitcoms are a terrific mirror to what's going on in society. And I think the reason that belief in fiscal citizenship has waned and willingness to cheat on taxes has increased, I think sitcoms are reflecting some real changes.

David Stewart 15:37

Now are these shows talking about, like, I know there's some things about return preparations and such. Are they discussing specific issues within tax or is it more of a generalized setting for the story?

Lawrence Zelenak 15:47

As you could imagine, there aren't too many that get into detail on substantive tax issues. But there are a lot of episodes where the plot turns on some aspect of taxation. There's a very nice Odd Couple episode from 1973 called, "The Ides of April," where initially Felix gets audited, but without quite realizing what he's doing, he says, "I'm the most honest taxpayer in the world. You shouldn't be auditing me. You should be auditing my roommate, Oscar," who's an incredible slob and pays no attention to how he fills out his tax return. Because he says this, they decide to audit Oscar. And it turns out that Oscar has a big deficiency, which he doesn't have the money to pay until at the very end of the episode, Felix runs in and says Oscar had these huge alimony deductions, which, because he was so slovenly about the way he prepared his tax return he never bothered to take. Actually the government owes him a refund. So, there's shows about business expense deductions as well. One thing you find in these old episodes is that plots tend to repeat on the shows that ran a long time because they did so many episodes a year. Usually in the 50s and 60s, they were doing 39 episodes a year. And if you have a long-running show, to come up with literally hundreds of new ideas, it gets hard after a while. So the Jack Benny show, first on radio and then on television, did I think four episodes altogether with basically the same plot, which was that friendly IRS agents show up at his house to ask him about his tax return, because they're concerned that he hasn't claimed enough business expense deductions. The joke being, of course, that he was supposed to be so incredibly cheap. So he explains , "Yeah, that's really right. I never spend money even as business expense deductions," and that's why he didn't claim them. So you can find shows about charitable deduction and you can find shows about entertainment expense deductions. There's a Twilight Zone episode. I know I'm sort of cheating here because nobody thinks of Twilight Zone as a sitcom, but about 10 or 20 percent of the Twilight Zone episodes actually are sitcom-ish. This is one of them. It's called, "The Man in the Bottle." It's from 1960, and this is not about a deduction, but about an income inclusion. And the whole plot turns on the question of whether or not windfalls are taxable, which is I'm sure you and the viewers know that they are in the United States, but there are other income tax systems in other countries where they are not. Most people are sufficiently unfamiliar with the taxation of windfalls because they've never gotten any. At least the no big ones that they may not be aware of this rule. So anyway, this couple that's having great difficulty making ends meet is visited by a genie in a bottle who gives them several wishes and their major wish is for $1 million. But they forget to wish that it'd be tax free. And so an IRS guy shows up and tells them it's taxable. And he says, "Your tax liability on the $1 million is $907,000," which that's not quite right in terms of marginal tax rates in 1960. But you know what , it's pretty close. The actual tax would have been around $850,000. So that episode, for example, looks at both tax ability to windfalls and high marginal tax rates that prevailed at the time of the show. One of my favorites that I haven't mentioned yet is Green Acres' Hooterville refund fraud episode from the early 1970s, which is about net operating losses basically, if you wanted to put it into a substantive category. For people who aren't familiar with the show, Oliver Wendall Douglas, high-powered New York lawyer, decides he really wants to become a farmer. And he moves to the most backwards place in America where they still think that Calvin Coolidge is president. And he picks up his tax refund check at the post office where all of the other farmers are sitting around the cracker barrel and they ask him, "What's that?" And he explains it to them. They're surprised because they weren't aware there was an income tax, but they misunderstand his explanation and think that what he has told them is if you lose money during the year in your business, the government will refund you, which means they will send you a check for the amount of money that you lost. And the farmers end up getting in the aggregate several hundred thousand dollars worth of refund checks. And they're not totally wrong. I mean, there is something called net operating loss carryovers, but they sort of misunderstand exactly how far it goes. So there's all kinds of stuff. Most of the episodes involve some substantive issue or other. Oh, I'll give you one more than I like a lot from the Andy Griffith show. Aunt Bee goes on a game show in Hollywood. And when she comes back, she's visited by an IRS agent. This is very odd for two reasons, but this kind of goes to the point that these shows don't always get things right technically. First of all, the agent shows up like a week after she's been on the show in the same year that she was on the show, so she hasn't even had a chance to file a return. And secondly, he doesn't talk to Aunt Bee. He talks to Andy, which is very peculiar. But the point of it is all of these things -- she won the washer and the dryer and the free trip and all that -- they're all taxable, which was news to her. So those are just some examples.

David Stewart 20:30

Do any of these betray, like a writer who seemed to have an ax to grind about some issue they were dealing with?

Lawrence Zelenak 20:35

Great question. Not much, no . I can't think of a single one where I got that impression from the show. And in fact, one of the things that's striking about even the later episodes is IRS employees are only rarely depicted in seriously negative lights. For the most part, I would say the taxpayers come off a lot worse in these episodes than the IRS.

David Stewart 20:57

I did want to ask about that. Is the tax profession portrayed in a fair light?

Lawrence Zelenak 21:02

So, let me break that into two parts. One is the non-government tax profession: tax lawyers and accountants. And what's really striking about that is those people basically don't exist. Just this morning, I was going back over my summaries of the hundred episodes or so looking for anything where a tax lawyer or an accountant or return preparer showed up. And there are almost no such. I think maybe that that's partly a function of the fact that you get more interesting sitcom situations when taxpayers prepare their own returns and aren't represented by lawyers at audit. But for whatever reason, they're basically missing an action. That has started to change for some reason, just in the last decade. The best one, which I just love, is a short bit from Portlandia from about seven or eight years ago where Carrie, one of the two lead characters, is dating a tax lawyer. And she said, "I think it's great to be dating a tax lawyer. I actually think tax lawyers are really sexy." And then it turns out that what he really wants to be is a guitarist in a rock band. And she finds that not attractive at all. And they stage an intervention where several people, including two actual music stars, tell him the world has enough rock musicians. What the world really needs is good tax lawyers and he's convinced . And then the last part of that episode is he's doing a one-man show where there's a marquee in front of a theater that says the name of his character. And I think the name of the show is 1099 or something like that. And they show him just talking on the phone with a client while he's talking about tax issues and the audience is applauding wildly. So that's a wonderfully positive depiction of a tax professional. What's striking is until very recently there've been almost no such depictions. But there have been a lot of depictions, and I don't mean there haven't been positive ones. I mean, there just haven't been any period. All along, there've been depictions of IRS officials and I think what's really striking is for the most part they're depicted pretty positively. There are exceptions. In the Roseanne episode, which overall may be my favorite episode. I recommend it to anyone who finds this topic at all interesting. When they go down to the IRS office, there's this extremely rude, snooty IRS official who tells Roseanne that you didn't have to come down here to ask this question because the answer is right there in the 1040 instructions. And she says, "Where? I didn't find it ." And he points it out to her and says, "There it is in black and white. I'm sorry there are no pictures." And then there's something, which is in a class by itself, a show by name of Alice, where the lead character i s a waitress struggling to make ends meet, who gets audited. And the auditor tells her, "You owe a lot of tax money," but puts his hands on her k nee a nd then says, "I could make it all go away, if you know what I mean." That's the only episode like that. For the most part, the IRS agents are actually depicted kind of neutrally to e ven positively. I n the Ellen episode that I mentioned before, w here the IRS has made a mistake, the IRS official says to her, "Sometimes IRS stands for "I'm Really Sorry.'" And there's a lot of that.

David Stewart 23:56

Now you alluded earlier to an episode of 3rd Rock from the Sun. So that's dealing with aliens interacting with the tax system. And so what sort of things happened in that episode?

Lawrence Zelenak 24:06

So for those who are, shockingly enough, not familiar with the premise of the show: A group of aliens, I think it's five altogether, arrive from a distant planet to investigate Earth and to masquerade as human beings, to better to investigate, and spend several years there. And they are much more intelligent than humans, but somehow the lead character, played by John Lithgow, didn't get the word for several years about the income tax. So finally, when he finds out that he has to prepare income tax returns, he starts doing it. And there's one scene where he is trying to prepare his return. And he says, "I don't understand. I can calculate the decaying orbit of a dying moon to within one-tenth of an inch. Why can't I calculate the subtotal of line 59A?" There are a lot of episodes going way, way back that involve people complaining about how difficult it is to fill out a tax return, including several where the joke is they read literally from the instructions to the 1040. And just reading literally from the actual instructions is enough to produce a laugh. This is perhaps the most extreme version of complaining about the complexity of income tax return preparation. It actually sounds a lot like the Albert Einstein quote, which may be real or apocryphal, that the hardest thing in the world to understand is the income tax. Well, these guys are smarter than Einstein. Eventually, they conclude that they actually owe a lot of money, which is if they filed their returns properly. And of course they don't want to pay this. One of the other characters says "I've got it. We can cheat on our taxes." And the third one says, "What a great idea. I can't believe no human has thought of this before." So they cheat on their taxes, claim a huge refund instead of having a tax liability, get audited, and it turns out that they end up having to pay the tax.

David Stewart 25:45

Now, we've just recently ran your update to the original, I think was it 2006, your original article about these?

Lawrence Zelenak 25:52

December 24th, 2007.

David Stewart 25:54

So can we expect about 10 years from now another update to your list?

Lawrence Zelenak 25:58

Well, I hope so. I've already in a sense, although all of your readers can already find out about this, but as it happens, the week after the update was published, you got a letter to the editor from a reader who had three episodes that I've missed. But yeah, I'm sure there will be more episodes. And I would love to do another update in about 10 years or so. I should mention that one interesting trend, which I don't have a good explanation for, is that these episodes are getting a little scarcer than there used to be. If you count the number of tax-related sitcom episodes I've been able to find, I'd say the decline started about in the 70s or maybe 80s. They've never disappeared. And I don't think they ever will disappear, as long as there's an income tax. It's kind of striking that there's a clear downward trend. I can't promise that many more episodes, but whatever I'm able to find, you bet .

David Stewart 26:46

All right , well, if our listeners have some ideas, what's the basic criteria to apply for inclusion on the list?

Lawrence Zelenak 26:52

I'm interested only in sitcoms, so the core of my interest is sitcoms and the federal income tax . I will admit to fudging that a little bit if I find something else that I think is really cool. For purposes of this list, I decided that with the Twilight Zone episode I mentioned was a sitcom, and there's some dramadies on the list as well, like The Wonder Years and Northern Exposure. But if something is a clear drama, that's beyond the scope. Also, if it's solely about some tax other than the income tax, that's beyond the scope as well. Ideally, the income tax is the main thing going on in the plot. But I included a lot of episodes where the income tax is the subplot as well. So basically if it's at least arguably a sitcom and there's a federal income tax angle, I'd be interested.

David Stewart 27:36

Well, Larry. It's been great talking to you. Thank you for being here.

Lawrence Zelenak 27:39

My pleasure, Dave. Thank you.

In the Pages Sneak Peek

David Stewart 27:42

And now, coming attractions. Each week we highlight new and interesting commentary in our magazines. Joining me now from her home is Content and Acquisitions Manager Faye McCray. Faye, what will you have for us?

Faye McCray 27:52

Thank you, Dave. In Tax Notes State, Robert Calafell and Alexander Dowd discuss how businesses that fall short of incentive requirements during the coronavirus pandemic should approach states and localities to mitigate problems. Paul Bogdanski, David Dorner, and Jeremy Gove discuss Illinois’s requirements for establishing domicile in another state. In Tax Notes International, Matt Andrew and Richard Collier address how the coronavirus pandemic could affect the arm’s-length principle in the OECD’s inclusive framework. Victor Adegite and Aimée Dushime with KPMG Advisory Services in Lagos explain the OECD’s proposed two-pillar approach to taxing the digital economy and provide a unique perspective on key elements of the proposal. And on the Opinions page, Nana Ama Sarfo sits down with Tifphani White-King, U.S. national tax practice leader at Mazars USA LLP, about her professional journey to becoming partner. William G. Gale makes a case for raising revenue with a VAT. Roxanne Bland interviews Sujata Yalamanchili, a partner at Hodgson Russ in Buffalo, New York. And now for a closer look at what's new and noteworthy in our magazines, here is Tax Notes Federal Editor in Chief Ariel Greenblum

Ariel Greenblum 29:11

Thanks, Faye. I'm here with Philip Wolf, who recently began writing a regular column for us in which he discusses his journey as a young lawyer in the tax field. Philip is joining us by phone from his home in California. Welcome, Philip. Can you give our listeners some background about how you have come up with your ideas for writing the column?

Philip Wolf 29:31

Of course. When COVID-19 happened, I actually got an email from Tax Notes and they were saying they want people to write about topics related to COVID-19. And I just graduated from law school and passed the bar at that time, so I didn't have a lot of specific tax knowledge that I could bring out. But what I did have were my experiences. So I decided to write about how COVID-19 has affected me as a beginning lawyer. My first article, "How a New Tax Lawyer’s Collision With the COVID-19 Job Market Has Led to Opportunities," I talked about how I've been volunteering for charities that have specific tax issues arising from the virus. Tax practitioners, we have this special knowledge that we can actually volunteer with other people and they find it very helpful. In the second article, "Learning Entry-Level Tax Skills Without an Entry-Level Tax Job," I wrote about how losing your job because of COVID-19 can actually be an opportunity to work on skills that you need to improve. And then lastly, in my most recent article, I talked about how COVID-19 is an opportunity for me to see that tax is kind of a warm and welcoming community. I've been reaching out to tax lawyers and they're helping me integrate myself in the tax world and treating me as a colleague, which for instance, I've been invited to meetings, they've been giving me career advice. And in one case, one even asked me to read an article to make me feel like a peer and kind of ask her how I come up with my articles. My inspiration truly comes from my journey. I hope that others reading it will relate to what I'm writing, whether they're young lawyers or seasoned practitioners who kind of remember what it's like being an entry-level associate.

Ariel Greenblum 30:57

You also recently wrote a special report that we published, "Family Court Attorney Fees for Innocent Spouses in Tax Court." Could you give us some takeaways from that one?

Philip Wolf 31:06

Absolutely. So as tax practitioners, we sometimes come across innocent spouse cases before the IRS-related divorces. Usually what kind of happens is there's one spouse who's either through incompetence or through malice is trying to use the Tax Court to play out drama rising from divorce proceedings in the family court. So I did some digging around and in California, they're actually special provision and there's quite a bit of case law where the family court can actually order a spouse that's acting maliciously or incompetently to pay the attorney's fees of the innocent spouse in any proceedings related to the marriage, including tax cases. The best thing about this provision is they don't have to be in the state of California and the innocent spouse can get the fees at the beginning of the case and they don't even have to show that they're going to win the case. They just have to show that there's a financial need. Now for tax lawyers, this is actually quite a benefit because the tax lawyer is the person who gets the write the entire declaration. And then they get brought in for all the tax work in the case. So this is good for the tax practitioner. It's also great because there are a lot of innocent spouses who might have the cases, but might not be able to pay for those cases or get representation. So you're actually doing a service for these people. So you're putting the malicious spouse in a position where he has to fund the innocent spouse's court costs. So at the most, your spouse is now incentivized to behave reasonably.

Ariel Greenblum 32:25

Thank you so much, Philip. Before we let you go, could you tell our listeners where they can find you online?

Philip Wolf 32:30

I have a LinkedIn profile. You can search for me under Philip Wolf, P-H-I-L-I-P Wolf like the animal. I also now have a Twitter, so my Twitter is @Philip_Wolf10.

Ariel Greenblum 32:44

You can find Philip's article online at taxnotes.com. Also be sure to subscribe to our YouTube channel Tax Analysts for more in-depth discussions about what's new and noteworthy in our magazines. Again, that's Tax Analysts with an S. Back to you, Dave.

David Stewart 33:01

You can read all that and a lot more in the pages of Tax Notes Federal, State, and International. That's it for this week. You can follow me online at @TaxStew, that's S-T-E-W. And be sure to follow at @TaxNotes for all things tax. If you have any comments, questions, or suggestions for a future episode, you can email us podcast@taxanalysts .org . And as always, if you like what we're doing here, please leave a rating or review wherever you download this podcast. We'll be back next week with another episode of Tax Notes Talk.