Diamond Graduate School of Law

LL.M. Program

Syllabus for Partnership Tax

Summer Semester only – 16 weeks and an exam week

2nd week June until last week September

I. COURSE DESCRIPTION

Partnership Taxation (3 cr. Summer only): Partnership Tax’s emphasis is the federal taxation of partnerships under Subchapter K and fiscally-transparent entities, such as limited liability companies (LLC's). Issues examined include contributions to and distributions from partnerships; formation, operation and liquidation; partnership operations; substantial economic effect regulations and special allocations; transfers of partnership interests; taxation of service partners; and effect of recourse and non-recourse liabilities and special basis adjustments. Prerequisites are Tax Procedure or Tax I unless the student is an experienced tax practitioner and receives permission from the Director.

II. PURPOSE

Partnership Tax is an LLM executive level course. This course will be taught at the executive level and will employ case studies beyond IRC analysis.

3 credits
required for US concentration

III. COURSE PROCEDURE

This course will involve fourteen weekly modules that are delivered through on-line instruction pursuant to current program specifications. Each module will contain text material, study guide instruction, and weekly interactive participation. Text material may contain a combination of code sections, cases, and commentary materials. Study guides will contain commentary materials upon the text materials with imbedded exercises and assignments to be completed either independently or within a group of two to five persons. Assignments may be submitted directly to the Instructor or submitted to the classroom.

Each module, selected students may be called upon to deliver answers in the Internet based classroom to questions posed by the instructor. Questions may be posed in case study form or in issue form. Answers may be short (one page) form or long form (five page analysis).

During the semester, module based audio and videotape lecture construction will be explored as well as the provision to students through streaming technology.

During the sixteen-week semester, the students will have two technology skills and control weeks. The first week of the course, the student will spend the time acquiring and testing the necessary accessing components of the course, including: blackboard skills, database access, proxy server access, material download, and other technical issues. Also, students will introduce themselves and identify with each other (camaraderie and network building). During the third week, students will be given another breather week to check the quality of their acquired technology technical skills and offsite database access in order to identify any problem areas that require immediate correcting.

During the semester, each student will receive at least two detailed feedback sessions from the Instructor through the detailed marking of his/her/group study guide assignments and/or class participation. Separately, the Instructor is available for office hour private counseling through email, telephone, and by residential office appointment.

Other assignments may receive feedback and will receive a grade, recorded in the online grade book that students may assess their performance.

IV. ATTENDANCE AND PARTICIPATION

This online course requires attendance which is measured by (1) the modular-weekly interactive participation opportunities in the classroom, (2) mandatory weekly participation through being called upon to address the class for certain modules as well as (3) modular study guide assignments. Missing mandatory weekly participation assignments is the equivalent of being not prepared in class and will result in a zero for that assignment. Not turning in study guide assignments will result in a zero for that assignment.

V. EVALUATION OF STUDENT PERFORMANCE

Grades will be determined through a combination of factors, as follows:

final exam – 50%;

weekly study guide assignments – 25%

weekly participation – 25%

VI. REQUIRED TEXTS

Electronic texts edited and authored by the Instructor, supplemented by reference materials. Reference materials will include source materials and secondary materials.

VII. REFERENCE MATERIAL

Research is conducted using the Internet WWW as well as, and most importantly, value added databases, such as

Lexis-Nexis US and foreign materials; Tax Treaties
BNA US and foreign materials; especially the country by country tax materials
BNA International
CCH International databases jurisdiction by jurisdiction, and its global treatises
CCH USA databases
Butterworths UK and international materials, especially Commonwealth/Caribbean case law
QuickLaw, especially Canadian and Commonwealth/Caribbean case law
Checkpoint-RIA-WGL-Gee, especially the treatises that explain planning techniques by topics, such as estate planning, for jurisdictions
Westlaw US and foreign materials
Tax Analysts, especially its superior tax treaty database, foreign law and global tax update magazines
Foreign Law Publishers - all foreign statues in English
World Compliance database
LLM and PhD thesis and dissertation databases
historical tax research using databases such as Hein and CCH
Matthew Bender databases
Lois Law e-libraries
amongst other databases that we subscribe to for you (see the external links in the classroom for details).

Also, the student should use the electronic book libraries and research the titles available.

VIII. WEEKLY SYLLABUS

Module 1: Overview

Module 2: General Concepts

Module 3: Acquisitions of Partnership Interests

Module 4: Determining the Basis of a Partner’s Partnership Interest

Module 5: Taxing Partnership Operations

Module 6: Section 704(b)

Module 7: Sections 704(c), 704(d), 465 and 469

Module 8: Shifting Interests / Partnership Terminations

Module 9: Transfers of Partnership Interests

Module 10: Distributions

Module 11: Death or Retirement of a Partner

Module 12: Sections 743(b) and 754

Module 13: Section 734

Module 14: Section 707