Friday, June 04, 2010

Invigorated by a change in projects

Although I like my foreign tax credits paper and think of it as making a significant contribution, the last stages of massaging the final version pre-edit (worse still, two final versions pending two edits) is never much fun. So I am relieved to have put it behind me for now.

David Bradford once observed that, if you ever polish an article to the point of formal perfection, you've badly misallocated the last few hours of your time, which would have yielded a far greater marginal product had you said "close enough" and started on something new.

In my case, something new means an article I had started work on about 4 months ago but then had to shelve until now after just a couple of days. (In the words of a former University of Chicago colleague, it was cooling its heels on the back burner.) Luckily, my subconscious appears to have been at work in the interim, giving me a clearer and cleaner sense of the project, which should save some effort by permitting the first draft to come closer to the final one.

Evidence that I am now thinking more clearly: The prior working title was quite turgid: "A Voluntary Worldwide Tax? Corporate Residence and the Transition Problem In U.S. International Taxation." As revised: "The Rising Tax-Electivity of U.S. Corporate Residence."

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