Lawyering's Ins and Outs

Facts: -Company for the past 7 years provide meals routinely to those who worked overtime whether exempt or non-exempt employees. - A local policy was agreed upon allowing payment of meals only if there was prior approval from the department manager and only in instances where the manager asked the employee to work overtime for late hours. - The company standard chart of accounts reflects an Account Code - Employee Meals (Employee Benefits). The account's definition is: "Payment for employees meals incurred during overtime, or where required by law. Must be approved and for the benefit or at the request of the Church entity, or required by law." Issue: Whether or not there is any income tax liability to the Employee-recipients of the meal benefit if the Company would charge the Meals against the account Employees Meals/Employees Benefits? Legal Opinion: No. Since the meals during overtime are given by the Employer within the business premises...

One of the tasks in the book " 2001 Things To Do Before You Die " is to " Be able to explain a hedge fund, risk arbitrage, and a mutual fund" . I find this interesting and something I can do since I am a lawyer and I am interested in securities regulation stuff. In fact, I authored a law school textbook entitled " Securities Regulation Code: With Annotation ." This was published in September 2002, and a Second Edition is to come out hopefully by June of this year. I submitted the manuscript already last September 2008. This is what I learned from Wikipedia . Risk arbitrage , or merger arbitrage, is an investment or trading strategy often associated with hedge funds. Translated to investment: Hypothetically, if "Joe's" taco shop was publicly traded at $50.00 per share, and "Sam's" taco shop moved to take over Joe's taco shop at a proposed $65.00 per share, this means Joe's taco shop's shares are instantly wort...