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Subjects For Feature Articles
General Suggestions Authors' Aids

General Suggestions: This section is devoted to providing guidelines for the selection of specific subjects for articles. By outlining several broad categories of articles, it may stimulate you or your colleagues to select a topic of interest. Certain articles are cited from The Tax Adviser to exemplify each approach.

  1. Significant recent developments in a given area.

This type of article separates fact from opinion. The ruling or court decision is discussed; the author's comments (e.g., analysis, tax planning hints) then follow.

See Sawyers and Whitlock, Significant Recent Developments in Estate Planning (September 2005).

  1. In-depth treatment of a narrow point.

No subject is too narrow to be a subject for a tax articleassuming that it requires (without padding) about 15 manuscript pages.

See Schell, Proposed Regs. Shed Light on Income Forecast Method (August 2004).

  1. Estate planning articles.

Because tax practitioners are, in general, not very sophisticated in estate planning, there is greater latitude for selection of subjects in this area. The subject matter—but not the treatment—can be less sophisticated.

See Brown, Third-Party Trusts Integrate Estate and Asset-Protection Planning (August 2005); Spoor, Final Regs. Define Income under Sec. 643 (May 2005); Savoth, Income and Estate Tax Planning for Special Needs Trusts (January 2005).

  1. Analysis of current development(s).

This would include analysis and planning ideas under new legislation.

See Cook and Oestreich, WFTRAs Individual Income Tax Provisions (February 2005).

  1. Community property articles.

Despite the fact that affluent taxpayers are migrating to and from community property states in increasing numbers and the population of such states has been growing disproportionately, the national tax periodicals seem to provide insufficient coverage of community property issues. Therefore, this tax area should provide a fertile source of specific subjects for articles that will interest a number of common law (as well as community property) state practitioners.

See Rogers, Christensen and Cochran, Overcoming the Boggs Dilemma in Community Property States, Part I (August 1999), Part II (September 1999).

  1. Several articles covering an aspect of a broad area.

This approach has been taken with respect to consolidated returns and ERISA, and could be applied to other areas, such as subpart F.

See Briskin, Like-Kind ExchangesCommon Problems and Solutions (April 2005); Orbach and Dilley, Sale of a Residence and Like-Kind Exchanges, Part I (November 2005) and Part II (December 2005).

  1. Trade or business profiles.

Articles dealing with a particular type of business, such as a bank or insurance company, or a particular size of business.

 

See Altieri, A Fringe Benefit Primer for the Closely Held C Corporation, Part I (October 2004), Part II (November 2004).

  1. Tax policy.

This type of article should deal with matters of policy on essentially a technical, rather than purely political, basis.

See Nellen, The AICPAs 10 Guiding Principles (February 2002).

  1. Subjects requiring current coverage.

Subjects that have been covered extensively in the not-too-recent past may still be worthy of coverage because of tax, accounting, economic or other reasons.

See Wood, Should Taxes Be Included in Damage Calculations? (October 2005); Eyberg and Raasch, FLP Planning after Strangi, Kimbell and Thompson (December 2004).

  1. Proposed, temporary or final regulations.

Articles on proposed, temporary or final regulations are always welcome, if the topic is of broad enough interest. Planning ideas under the rules should be included.

See Lau and Shum, New Rules on FTC Allocations June 2005); Schell, Proposed Regulations Shed Light on Income Forecast Method (August 2004).

  1. Problems, pitfalls and planning opportunities.

This type of article deals with the problems, etc., concerning a given tax subject, the general rules of which the reader is already familiar (or can become familiar) with. That is, technical explanations would be limited to that relevant to the problem, etc., at issue.

See Sunderman, Schedule M-3: Closing the Corporate Book-Tax Gap (July 2005); Carslaw, Mason and Mills, How the AMT Affects Long-Term Capital Gain Rates (September 2005).

  1. Checklists.

See AICPA Tax Divisions Partnership Taxation Technical Resource Panel, Partnership Elections Grid (April 2005).

  1. New laws.

Of course, new laws provide a fertile source of articles. TTA's experience with recent legislation shows that quality, rather than time, is of the essence to the publication of articles on new laws. Because the tax services can publish surveys of new laws more quickly, no real purpose is served by stressing time in publishing articles in TTA.

See Karlinsky and Orbach, The AJCAs Domestic Business Provisions (March 2005); Nissenbaum, Significant Individual Provisions of the AJCA (February 2005).

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