August 2012 archive

Tax Court expert witness discovery catches up

Federal Rule of Civil Procedure (FRCP) 26(b)(4) was amended in 2010 to shield from discovery (i) drafts of expert witness reports and (ii) certain pretrial communications with expert witnesses. This article provides the details of this earlier change.  Effective July 2012, the U.S. Tax Court “Rules of Practice and Procedure” were amended for the same …

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DOJ appoints first ever Whistleblower Ombudsperson

Recently-appointed Department of Justice (DOJ) Inspector General Michael Horowitz appointed a new Whistleblower Ombudsperson within the Office of the Inspector General (OIG). Robert Storch, an experienced federal prosecutor, will fill the newly-created position. The announcement indicated that this is the first such position in the federal government. The OIG announcement of the new position indicates …

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Whistleblower Recovery Is Ordinary Taxable Income

The Ninth Circuit decided a taxation case of first impression involving whether a qui tam or whistleblower recovery provides a taxable capital gain from a sale of property, or ordinary taxable income. The District Court in Los Angeles, and the Ninth Circuit both agreed with the IRS that the higher rate of taxation from ordinary …

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Forbes Gets it Wrong.

That’s a headline I did not expect to get a chance to write.  And to be honest, the mistake is on a post on the Forbes blog and not their namesake publication, which I presume gets more scrutiny.  But the flaw is in fact quite obvious. The post relates to the Internet Sales Tax bill …

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Proposed Changes to Litigation Accounting & Disclosures Are Dropped

In July 2012, the Financial Accounting Standards Board (FASB) voted to drop a controversial project that would have required companies to disclose more about contingent losses, including most notably those arising from litigation. The now-withdrawn proposal would have required significant additional disclosure of litigation. The vast majority of those commenting on the proposal opposed it, …

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Olympic Games Still a Loss Leader

Historically, the right to broadcast the Olympic Games has not been a stand alone money maker for the network that acquired it.  When NBC announced that the Olympic Games would be at “about breakeven”, some thought this trend had been broken.  It hasn’t.  Reportedly NBC paid about $1.2 billion for the U.S. rights to broadcast …

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Permanent link to this article: https://betweenthenumbers.net/2012/08/olympic-games-still-a-loss-leader/

Virtual Worlds are the Subject of Copyright Infringement Allegations

Electronic Arts (“EA”) filed a lawsuit in the U.S. District court for the Northern District of California alleging that Zynga’s “The Ville” infringes on EA’s “The Sims Social”.  EA’s position is that the two Facebook based social games are “largely indistinguishable to an uninitiated observer.” The stakes in this intellectual property battle are high, as …

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