Tax Justice Warriors

As part of a series of interviews with colleagues in Low Income Taxpayer Clinics from across the country and students in our clinic at Temple Law, I interviewed Syracuse Law tax clinic director and Professor Rob Nassau. I had the chance to sit down with Rob at the annual Low Income Taxpayer Clinics Conference in Washington, D.C. in December 2023.

In this episode, in the spirit of Thanksgiving, I give thanks to so many people who support me and make my job easier.

This episode is a reflection on one year of the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) and the impact President Biden's signature domestic legislative achievement has had on taxpayers and tax practitioners. 

I discuss in the episode a major professional development: I am now a Professor of Practice and Director of the Low Income Taxpayer Clinic at Temple University Beasley School of Law! After five wonderful years at Philadelphia Legal Assistance Taxpayer Support Clinic, I am now pursuing this exciting opportunity. I am eager to represent clients across Pennsylvania, to supervise law students, and to teach tax law and IRS procedure.

This episode is a discussion of how workers can challenge their misclassification as independent contractors through the IRS SS-8 process.

I discuss best practices for how practitioners can identify, address, and remedy misclassification on behalf of clients. I discuss the IRS procedures, including the accurate reporting of misclassification income as wages on tax returns, that individuals should know. 

Here are some important resources on worker misclassification:

Philadelphia Legal Assistance page on misclassification

Center for Urban Pedagogy-designed poster that I worked on regarding misclassification

U.S. Department of Labor page on misclassification

Presentation on misclassification that I did with attorney Rebecca Stavish

IRS instructions on Form SS-8

My most recent Procedurally Taxing blog post on 26 U.S.C. 7434 (discussed in episode)

In this episode, I discussed what I learned at the ABA Tax Section May 2023 Meeting in Washington, D.C. I mentioned several important sessions I attended and how I had the chance to ask IRS Commissioner Daniel Werfel a question during his closing plenary remarks. 

This episode also includes interviews I conducted, at the conference, with two great colleagues and mentors, Leslie Book and Mandi Matlock. They both generously agreed to sit down with me on the final day of the conference to discuss their careers and their perspectives.

At Villanova Law, Professor Les Book, a nationally recognized scholar on tax procedure and coauthor of the Procedurally Taxing blog, teaches several tax courses and has experience in numerous roles there that include Director of the Federal Tax Clinic. I had the privilege of having Professor Book as my professor of Introduction to Federal Income Tax in my 3L spring semester at Villanova. Since then, he has helped me get to where I am today, including in receiving the ABA Tax Section Brunswick Public Service Fellowship. 

Professor Mandi Matlock, who recently served as Interim Director of the Federal Tax Clinic at the Legal Services Center of Harvard Law School, has worked as a low income taxpayer clinic attorney at Texas RioGrande Legal Aid for over two decades. In the meantime, she became a nationally renowned expert on tax and consumer law matters as she was of counsel to the National Consumer Law Center and was a Local Taxpayer Advocate in Austin, among other roles.

In this episode, I break down the 2023 tax filing season as I offer reflections on how the $80 billion in additional funding for the IRS, from the Inflation Reduction Act, appears to have notably improved service for taxpayers and tax practitioners.

I also delve into the history of the fedreal refund statute of limitations as it is an issue that became salient when the IRS announced that July 17, 2023 is the refund deadline for unfiled 2019 returns. I briefly also discuss the new IRS strategic operating plan (regarding how the IRS will use their new funding); you can read the plan here.

At the Annual Low Income Taxpayer Clinics Conference in Phoenix on December 7, 2022, I had the privilege of sitting down with Professor Keith Fogg, a mentor and colleague. Keith practiced at the IRS Office of Chief Counsel for over 30 years before he began an academic career in 2007 first running the Villanova Law Federal Tax Clinic and then running the Harvard Law Federal Tax Clinic from 2015 until his retirement in 2022.

Additionally, Keith cofounded the Procedurally Taxing blog (for which I have written several articles) that he still helps run and his name is often associated with the American Bar Association Tax Section's Effectively Representing Your Client Before the IRS ("The Fogg Manual"), as he has edited the manual's 5th, 6th, and 7th editions (I had the privilege of authoring the worker classification chapter for the 8th edition).

At the American Bar Association (ABA) Section of Taxation Midyear Meeting in San Diego on February 10, 2023, I sat down with one of my mentors, former National Taxpayer Advocate Nina Olson, a tax law titan and legend thanks to her nearly two decades of service leading the Taxpayer Advocate Service, and ABA Christine A. Brunswick Fellow Anna Gooch, an esteemed colleague and dedicated practitioner. We discussed their work at the Center for Taxpayer Rights, an organization Olson founded after she retired as the National Taxpayer Advocate.

For more information on the Brunswick Fellowship, a fellowship I benefited from in my first two years of practice, visit here.

Omeed sits down here with National Taxpayer Advocate Erin Collins at the 2023 Annual Low Income Taxpayer Clinic (LITC) Grantee Conference in Phoenix, Arizona on December 8, 2022. Collins spoke about the difficulties taxpayers and tax practitioners faced with the IRS in 2022.

She also discussed how her office is working to address these problems. Since this interview was conducted, the LITC maximum grant, which was discussed here, has been temporarily increased from $100,000 to $200,000 per year, as described here on page 3 of the Low Income Taxpayer Clinics 2022 Program Report.

Since this interview was recorded, Collins and her office also presented the National Taxpayer Advocate Annual Report to Congress, which identified several problems at the IRS and issued recommendations. You can read the National Taxpayer Advocate 2022 Annual Report to Congress here.