Voting In-Person Absentee in Alabama

Voting In-Person Absentee is the easiest way to vote in the 2020 election in Alabama.

1. Find your absentee voting location (usually your county courthouse) at:
https://www.sos.alabama.gov/city-county-lookup/absentee-election-manager

2. Head to your county courthouse or absentee election manager's office. Bring your valid state-issued photo ID. Wear a mask!

3. Ask for an absentee ballot application. Fill it out. Check the box "I have a physical illness or infirmity which prevents my attendance at the polls" if you are voting absentee due to COVID-19 concerns.

4. Hand in completed application with your photo ID. Once your application is approved, you will be handed your ballot.

5. Mark your ballot!

6. Put your completed ballot in the secrecy envelope and then put the secrecy envelope inside the outer envelope.

7. Write your address on the outer envelope.

8. Check the box "I am physically incapacitated and will not be able to vote in person on election day." if you are voting absentee due to COVID-19 concerns.

9. Sign the outer envelope in front of a notary or 2 witnesses. Witnesses can be office employees.

10. Have the notary or 2 witnesses sign the outer envelope.

11. Ask the clerk to see if everything is in order.

12. If you need help call the Voter Protection Hotline: 1-866-OUR-VOTE (1-866-687-8683). #VOTE

Tax Law and the Environment: A Multidisciplinary and Worldwide Perspective is now available in paperback format

Cumberland School of Law introduces their "Interview with the Author" series with Professor Roberts discussing her co-authored work, Tax Law and the Environment.

Tax Law and the Environment: A Multidisciplinary and Worldwide Perspective takes a multidisciplinary approach to explore the ways tax policy is used to solve environmental problems throughout the world. Environmental taxation involves using taxes to impose a cost on environmentally harmful activities or tax subsidies to provide preferred tax treatment to more sustainable alternatives. This book provides a detailed analysis of environmental taxation, with examples from around the world. As the extraction, processing, and use of energy resources has been a major cause of environmental harm, this book examines the taxation and subsidization of both fossil fuels and renewable energy. Its analysis of the past, present, and future uses of environmental taxation will help policymakers move economies toward sustainability, as well as inform students, academics, and citizens about tax solutions for pressing environmental issues.

Lexington Books, a division of Rowman & Littlefield, has now published Tax Law and the Environment: A Multidisciplinary and Worldwide Perspective in paperback format as of July 15, 2020. The hardback version was published in 2019.

https://www.amazon.com/Tax-Law-Environment-Multidisciplinary-Perspective/dp/1498559662

Flattening the Curve - What Climate Change Advocates Can Learn from COVID-10 Pandemic and Response

The ABA has posted the video for our June 30 webinar on "Flattening the Curve" - What Climate Change advocates can learn from the COVID Pandemic and response. The ABA Section on Civil Rights and Social Justice hosted a panel discussion including Sara Bronin, the Faculty Director, Center for Energy & Environmental Law, University of Connecticut School of Law, Michael Gerrard, the Andrew Sabin Professor of Professional Practice, Columbia Law School; Faculty Director, Sabin Center for Climate Change Law, Columbia Law School, Adam Zipkin, Legislative Counsel, U.S. Sen. Cory Booker, and me, TraceyRoberts – Associate Professor of Law, Cumberland School of Law, Samford University. Lisa Benjamin, Assistant Professor of Law, Lewis & Clark Law School, moderated the panel.

Everyone has now heard of "flattening the curve," a call for collective action to limit the worst effects of COVID-19. Advocates of climate action have begun to note the uncanny similarities between unchecked climate change and the pandemic, including the challenges brought by exponential growth, increased public awareness of the problem, and the imperative of a unified public response. Both pandemics and climate change know no boundaries and have the most impact on vulnerable communities; but ultimately they affect us all. Both jeopardize the safety, well-being and inherent dignity of those affected. And both trigger legal and ethical obligations of governments and the private sector to protect and safeguard the civil, political, economic, social and cultural human rights that pandemics and climate change threaten equally. Because climate change, like COVID-19, is a global problem with local consequences, addressing it will require a collaborative and coordinated set of solutions implemented locally, nationally, regionally and internationally. Attorneys have a major role to play by writing and advocating for meaningful change. Speakers will describe the lessons COVID-19 has taught us about the need for an effective global response; and they will identify a variety of legal actions governments and the private sector must take to "flatten the curve" and keep the worst effects of climate change at bay.

Poverty, Faith, and Justice: The SaveFirst Program Comes to Samford University

Exciting news at Samford University! Stephen Black, grandson of Supreme Court Justice Hugo Black, is bringing his course, Poverty, Faith, and Justice, and his SaveFirst program, to our undergraduate curriculum for the Spring of 2018.

Professor Black is the Director for the Center for Ethics and Social Responsibility at the University of Alabama. Following his grandfather's footsteps, he is working to promote civic engagement and connection throughout the United States by connecting college students with concrete opportunities to make a difference in the lives of others.

High income households generally pay licensed tax professionals to prepare their tax returns. The cost of those services is usually below $175. Unfortunately, commercial preparation services charge low income households an average of $400 per return. The preparers are often untrained and fail to take the proper level of care. The cost of these services to Alabama families is $128 million per year.

Through the Poverty, Faith and Justice course, students examine policies and attitudes toward low-income families through readings, class discussions, lectures and work in the community. With no prior tax experience or knowledge, students have the opportunity to learn basic tax law, receive training to become certified as IRS-trained Volunteer Tax Preparers, and assist families in their communities throughout the state through high-quality tax preparation services. Since 2007, 5,418 SaveFirst volunteers have prepared tax returns for 63,154 families, helping them to claim $113.3 million in refunds, saving $20.7 million in fees.

Another ImpactAmerica program, FocusFirst, has screened pre-school age children for vision problems. Since 2004 3,557 student volunteers have screened 432,830 preschoolers, identifying 44,696 children with vision problems, and connecting them with optometrists and ophthalmologists to address their needs. Through Impact America, Professor Black has extended the geographic reach of the programs he developed with ImpactAlabama to Florida, South Carolina, Tennessee, and Philadelphia.

Many thanks to the Mann Center for Ethics and Leadership for making this opportunity possible.

Tax Brackets and Why You Shouldn't Fear a Raise

I enjoyed a few seconds in the national spotlight this week when Adrienne Hill interviewed me for a piece on tax brackets for National Public Radio's Marketplace: Tax brackets and why you shouldn't fear a raise

For more on the history of the U.S. income tax system, tax brackets and rates, see my 2014 article, Brackets: A Historical Perspective.

100+ Years of the Income Tax: Putting Income Tax Reform in Context

This year I donned my suffragette
outfit in honor of the 16th
Amendment, ratified in 1913.

At the beginning of the semester, my students and I take a stroll through the 100+ years of the Federal Income Tax.

As we walk through the changes in rates over time, I ask my students to explain what was happening in U.S. history during each decade and consider how those events may have affected the tax system.

This gives us an opportunity to talk about the federal budget, budget deficits, the federal debt, fairness, efficiency, complexity and incentives. This is especially fun when tax reform is part of the Congressional agenda.

Fortunately, the history of the income tax holds some surprises. . . . 

• Marginal Rates. The highest marginal income tax rate was 94% (during WWII) and the lowest marginal rate was 1% (during the first few years of the income tax).  
  
  Today our bottom rate is 10% and our top rate is 39.6% on ordinary income. The top capital gains rate is 20%. There is also a separate 3.8% rate applied to net investment income.
  
  
• Level of Income to which Top Rates Applied. Just prior to WWII, the top rate, 81%, was applied to incomes in excess of $80 million (in today's dollars). Today, the top rate of 39.6% is applied to ordinary income in excess of  $418,400 (for unmarried individuals) or $470,000 (for couples who are married filing jointly).
  
• Number of Brackets. We have had as many as 56 rates and tax brackets (during WWI and WWII) and as few as 3 (after the Tax Reform Act of 1986).
  
  
• Personal Exemption and Standard Deduction. We have always exempted some income from the scope of the income tax. For the first few years The income tax was levied only against incomes in excess of $70,000 (in today's dollars). This year the standard deduction plus the personal exemption is $10,400 for an unmarried individual.

• Inflation. We have a system of graduated rates. In general, an unmarried individual will not pay income tax on his first few dollars of earnings because the standard deduction and personal exemption shield that income from tax. The next $9,350 is taxed at 10%, the next $28,625 is taxed at 15%, the next $53,950 is taxed at 25%, and so on for the 28%, 33%, and 35% rates until 39.6% is applied to individual income in excess of $418,400.

• 

  The downward curves show the
  impacts of inflation.

  The brackets are adjusted for inflation each year.  However, that hasn't always been the case. Before 1981, Congress set the rates at specified dollar amounts. As inflation reduced the purchasing power of the dollar each year, higher rates were levied against lower and lower amounts of real income. 
  
  In 1965 the top rate of 70% was applied to incomes in excess of $784,000 (in today's dollars). By 1981, the rates and brackets had not been changed significantly, but because of inflation the top rate of 70% was being applied to real incomes of only about $281,000 (in today's dollars).
  
  Congress enjoyed an annual tax increase without having to pass tax legislation. Yikes!  Fortunately, with the Tax Reform Act of 1981, we began adjusting the brackets and rates to reflect inflation.
  
• War. During wars we have always increased rates, except for 2001, when we began the war in Afghanistan, and 2003, when we began the war in Iraq. Instead of increasing rates, Congress passed tax cuts in these years.

For more, see 103:3 Northwestern University Law Review 925 (2014).  For information about U.S. tax history before the Income Tax, visit Tax Analysts' Tax History Museum.

Legal Executives at Tech Firms Promote Federal Funding for Legal Aid

Top legal executives at Cisco, Juniper Networks, Hewlett Packard Enterprise, Microsoft, Google, Salesforce.com, Symantec, Verizon, Comcast, Yahoo, LinkedIn, NetApp, Adobe, Facebook and Twitter speak out against the defunding of Legal Services Corporation, the government organization that provides funding for civil legal services for low income Americans.

Legal Services Corporation (LSC) is an independent nonprofit established by Congress in 1974 to provide financial support for civil legal aid programs that help low-income Americans. Legal aid programs ensure access to justice by providing free legal help to households with annual incomes at or below 125% of the federal poverty guidelines. Clients include the working poor, veterans and military families, homeowners and renters, families with children, farmers, the disabled, and the elderly.