Manoj Viswanathan

Associate Professor of Law UC Hastings College of the Law

  • San Francisco CA

Contacts: viswanathanm@uchastings.edu / 415-565-4694 / Office 314-200

Contact

UC Hastings College of the Law

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Biography

Prof. Viswanathan teaches doctrinal tax courses and co-teaches the UC Hastings Business Tax Practicum for Social Enterprises. His research focuses on tax policy, economic development, and the regulation of tax-exempt organizations.

Prior to his arrival at UC Hastings, Viswanathan was a clinical teaching fellow and lecturer at Yale Law School, where he co-taught the Community and Economic Development clinic, and worked as a tax associate with Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher, & Flom LLP's New York City office.

He received his LLM and J.D. from New York University School of Law, and undergraduate and graduate degrees from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Areas of Expertise

Tax Policy
Economic Development
The Regulation of Tax Exempt Organizations
Community Development

Accomplishments

Judge Rose L. & Herbert Rubin Law Prize

Awarded for most outstanding note for the NYU Law Review in international, commercial, or public law

1st place, Federal Bar Association Section of Taxation Writing Competition

2007

1st place, Tannenwald Competition for Excellence in Tax Scholarship

2006

Education

New York University School of Law

LL.M.

Law

New York University School of Law

J.D.

Law

The Massachusetts Institute of Technology

S.M.

Chemical Engineering

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Affiliations

  • New York Bar
  • United States Tax Court

Media Appearances

Manoj Viswanathan to Join UC Hastings Faculty

UC Hastings College of the Law  online

2015-11-18

UC Hastings is pleased to announce that Manoj Viswanathan is joining the faculty as an Associate Professor of Law...

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How We Tax (letter to the editor)

The New Yorker  print

2016-04-25

Alec MacGillis, in his article on the billionaire philanthropist David Rubenstein, shows how the carried-interest loophole in tax law has allowed Rubenstein and others to accumulate vast amounts of wealth (“The Billionaires’ Loophole,” March 14th)...

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Commentary on California Propositions 55 and 56

UC Hastings  online

2016-09-13

Commentary on California Propositions 55 and 56.

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Selected Articles

The Hidden Costs of Cliff Effects in the Internal Revenue Code

University of Pennsylvania Law Review

2016-05-04

Cliff effects in the Internal Revenue Code trigger a sudden increase of federal tax liability when some attribute of a taxpayer—most commonly income—exceeds a particular threshold value. As a result, two taxpayers in nearly identical economic situations can face considerably different tax liabilities depending on which side of the triggering criterion they fall. The magnitude of the equity and efficiency costs associated with cliff effects is significant: cliff effects are attached to tax provisions amounting to hundreds of billions of dollars, the majority of which are targeted at low- and moderate-income taxpayers...

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Form 1023-EZ and the Streamlined Process for the Federal Income Tax Exemption: Is the IRS Slashing Red Tape or Opening Pandora's Box?

University of Pennsylvania Law Review Online

2014-09-30

On July 1, 2014, the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) released Form 1023-EZ, a streamlined version of the application required of all organizations seeking federal tax-exempt status under section 501(c) of the Internal Revenue Code. By stripping away familiar elements like the narrative of specific activities, financial projections, and provision of organizing documents, Form 1023-EZ requires dramatically less time to complete and represents a radical change to a decades-old process...

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Sunset provisions in the tax code: A critical evaluation and prescriptions for the future

New York University Law Review

2007-01-01

In this Note, the author argues that sunset provisions associated with tax legislation are, in their current form, the product of political maneuvering designed to bypass budgetary constraints and are exploited as a means of enacting what is, in reality, permanent legislation...

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