Law Librarian Blog

Miers' Law Firm Earned $3.5 Million from Shoddy Tax Shelter Opinions

While she was in charge during the late 1990s, Supreme Court nominee Harriet Miers’s law firm provided investors with questionable legal opinions for an abusive tax shelter, typically generating a $50,000 fee, according to a Senate report.

The February 2005 Senate report details the role of Miers’s firm, Locke, Liddell & Sapp, in transactions involving a tax shelter known as contingent deferred swap (CDS). The report says Locke, working in concert with accounting firm Ernst & Young, provided clients with a legal opinion assuring them that the transaction “should” be upheld in court if challenged by the IRS. Reportedly 70 of the CDS shelters were sold.

As noted in Roth & Company Tax Updates

If the $50,000 fee is correct, the 70 transactions would have generated $3.5 million for the firm, without much more effort than mastering the "find and replace" function on the word processor.

TaxProf Blog covers the story in detail.

Congress Abandons WikiConstitution

America's finest news source, The Onion, has the story.

Ron Jones, Univ of Cincinnati Law Library

Opening in January?

CCN is reporting on Tulane, Loyola, the University of New Orleans, and Xavier's plans to reopen by January. Good luck.