The Other Tax Review

Source: Benvin Lozada

The Federal Income Tax class was heartbroken last Thursday morn’ when Professor Stephan was traveling and cancelled class. Many a tear was shed, and this time they were shed out of sadness instead of happiness, as is typical when tax class is in session. Thankfully, Professor Stephan taught an exciting and fun make-up class earlier in the week on Tuesday, so no true harm was done, but the prospect of spending five full days without tax class intimidated the students more than anything since finals season. 

To mitigate this tragedy, a handful of students organized a tax review session, sadly not sponsored by the Virginia Tax Review, so it was just tax review. Not Virginia Tax Review tax review. Due to this oversight, the students felt more excluded from the VTR than municipal bond income is from taxable income. 

The classroom was open at the time, so a cadre of enthusiastic and hardy students convened at 8:30 a.m. on the dot to celebrate taxes and discuss accounting. The chalkboard bore witness to scintillating discussions unofficially led by Andrew Moore ’28, as the former accountant and teaching assistant in the room. He gave it his best shot but ultimately succeeded more with basic basis concepts and less so with more complicated sinking fund mechanisms that had gone somewhat over his head. Thankfully, the brilliant Adam Slocum ’27 was there to elucidate it for the rest of the cohort. 

The engineers in the room used excellent examples of excavators to exemplify the exhilarating concepts of accelerated depreciation. Ultimately, their explanation of the concept was more successful than was Chairmen Rostenkowski and Packwood’s attempt to use the accelerated depreciation to encourage American manufacturing back in 1986. The lack of Professor Stephan also prevented the class from learning further about the role esteemed alumni of the tax program have played in the political fights over the American tax code from the 1950s to the 1980s and beyond. No class is complete without such amusing and enlightening anecdotes, so the students were reduced to examples of Cheez-Its and such; though even these were foreign concepts to a student body tragically starved and deprived of the free snacks from Student Affairs (which thankfully do not count towards the taxable income of students since they would be a de minimis fringe benefit of attending school here). 

Maintaining a lesson taught to (not professor) Moore back in Kansas, the less he taught, the more the other students learned. When students asked more questions and discussed among themselves, such difficult concepts as life annuities were reduced to simple component parts, just as a taxpayer’s total income is reduced to the taxable income through exclusions and deductions. Through their conversations amongst themselves, undistracted by Moore’s ramblings, the students deduced deductions and enlightened themselves on tax law. Thankfully, no one asked about Moore v. United States, as that could have created more confusion than when the Cheez-It basis example featured an original basis of ten dollars and a post-consumption basis of five dollars after consumption worth five dollars.  

Professor Stephan also planned ahead and had another make-up class to make up for having another travel day on Monday, February 23. The students neglected to have an additional session since the need for sleep after the weekend somehow outweighed the need for additional tax law knowledge. 

The students who attended appreciated the session and Moore’s combination of semi-competent tax accounting knowledge with poor jokes. “I’m pretty sure I could have taught the class better than Professor A. Moore, but he did a good enough job for government work,” said Slocum. 

Speaking of tax benefits, if any kind and benevolent readers would like to support the Law Weekly while earning a tax deduction, they are encouraged to donate, hopefully copiously, to the Law Weekly. As a non-profit, they are glad to accept donations to help them in their mission of spreading truth and laughter throughout the Law School. 

Author: Andrew Moore ‘28