The Credit We Love to Hate
How to ease the pain of R&D tax credits
We’ve all been taught not to raise certain topics at work, among them religion and politics, to name just two. They are polarizing and could even be career-ending, depending on whom you engage with or how the conversation goes. What about water-cooler topics like traffic, Mondays, audits, or R&D tax…
The Votes Are In: State Responses to Federal Tax Reform
TCJA’s impact on states poses practical concerns and challenges
H.R. 1,1 colloquially known by its former name, the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act (TCJA), made sweeping changes to the Internal Revenue Code and has far-reaching implications for state tax systems that broadly conform to the IRC. This article highlights state legislative and administrative responses to the TCJA as well…
TCJA—So Many Questions, So Little Time
Law leaves significant open questions for Treasury and the IRS to answer
On December 22, 2017, President Trump signed into law the act commonly referred to as the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act (TCJA, PL 115-97). Like much tax legislation, the TCJA provides a legislative framework but leaves a significant number of questions to be answered by the Treasury Department and the…
Don’t Mess With the IRS
Later in this issue of Tax Executive, you will read an article by an Alston & Bird tax professional on the subject of tax evasion, a serious crime. According to the IRS Criminal Investigation Division’s 2017 Annual Report, in 2017 alone 1,811 of the 3,019 investigations it initiated were for… Read more »
Julia Lagun
Some say that practicing tax law is like playing chess. If that’s true, then Julia Lagun, a competitive chess player since age four, has had quite a lot of practice. Lagun, senior vice president and senior tax director at KeyCorp, has always been good with numbers and puzzles and has… Read more »
Award Annual Scholarships
Philadelphia and Harrisburg Chapters
A highlight of the Philadelphia and Harrisburg Chapters’ year is awarding scholarships to outstanding students from local universities. The two chapters pool their resources to maximize scholarship awards. In the 2017–2018 year, they awarded six $2,000 scholarships. A scholarship candidate must be a junior or senior accounting or business major…
In Memoriam: Paul Schaffhausen
David McCullough, the eminent biographer and historian, said, “Real success is finding your lifework in the work that you love.” If that observation is correct, Paul Schaffhausen was a true success—in so many ways, on so many levels. Paul Schaffhausen, a TEI member of forty-two years, and retired assistant vice… Read more »
TEI Launches New Institute Brand
It’s an exciting time for TEI and its members. As the Institute looks toward the future and continues to evaluate how it can best serve members, embarking on strategic initiatives that propel the Institute forward and position TEI as the go-to organization for expert information and advisement is essential. It… Read more »
Emerging Leader: Dina Armstrong
Is there a connection among math, puzzles, and tax? For Dina Armstrong, there just might be. “I have always enjoyed math and puzzles, and the fact that I could work with the two together has been a motivating goal for me,” she explains. And when, in her junior year in… Read more »
The Holiday Season
To most, the holiday season usually means vacations, physical time away from the office (although being fully disconnected is a dream of the past), gatherings among family and friends, Feast of the Seven Fishes, and heated political arguments. Oh, sorry—that’s just my family. For us in the tax world, the… Read more »


An Overview of the EU Public Country-by-Country Reporting Rules The European Union (EU) has long been at the forefront…
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TEI Welcomes New Staff, Promotes Team Member Erica Larkin Erica Larkin joined TEI in November as the…