Amending the Johnson Amendment in the Age of Cheap Speech

This is an excerpt from Professor Ellen Aprill's article published in the Illinois Law Review, in which Professor Aprill concludes: 

Charities can have enormous influence on political campaigns with little expense in today’s digital world. Contributions to charities are deductible; contributions to PACs and non-charitable section 501(c) organizations are not. Many who wish to intervene in political campaigns will shift their contribution from PACs and social welfare organizations to charities. I suspect that the Joint Committee of Taxation underestimates the revenue loss from even a five-year de minimis exception.

Under our current campaign finance regime, only dollars that have been taxed can be used for political intervention. A de minimis exception for campaign intervention for charities would undermine this basic principle. Moreover, over time, permitting charities to engage in partisan politics would reduce the respect long afforded to these entities and thus harm the sector. A de minimis exception to the campaign intervention prohibition would damage both the laws regulating charities and the laws regulating campaign finance. Our country would be far poorer for such changes.

Read the full article here.

Whitney Houston Estate Settles with IRS over Right of Publicity Valuation

By Professor Jennifer Rothman

The Whitney Houston estate and the IRS have settled their dispute over the value of the Grammy award-winner’s estate. The more than $11 million dollar disagreement in the amount of taxes owed centered on the valuation of Houston’s intellectual property rights, and particularly the value of her postmortem right of publicity. The estate had claimed that Houston’s right of publicity was worth just under $200,000, while the IRS claimed that it was worth more than $11.7 million. A staggering difference.

The IRS and the estate ultimately settled with the estate agreeing to pay $2 million. The IRS had initially sought more than $11 million in taxes and penalties from the estate. The stipulation entered on December 26th did not specify what Houston’s right of publicity was ultimately valued at.

The stipulation and settlement yet again avoided a court determination of whether the right of publicity should be part of the estate in the first place. Like the Michael Jackson estate, the Houston estate did not contest the inclusion of the right of publicity in the estate’s property―something I think estates should more actively start doing.

Read the full blog post on Rothman's Roadmap to the Right of Publicity.