54% of legal professionals in the Asia Pacific region use Web 2.0 for professional research, according to research CCH conducted last year.

You won’t find that particular figure in our original whitepaper results.  It’s part of some further analysis I did on the results for my presentation at the upcoming Australian Law Librarians Association conference.  I’ll put up a copy of the presentation and paper after the conference is finished but I thought I would give you a taste by posting some of the material I wrote that wound up on the cutting room floor.  Here goes!

54% of legal professionals in the Asia Pacific region use Web 2.0 for professional research, according to research CCH conducted last year.

What does this growing trend of legal professionals using Web 2.0 for research mean for law librarians?  There have been many papers and debates of late on the decline of legal research skills (check out these ones from the ALLA conference last year).  Is the growing reliance on Web 2.0 a symptom of the “Google researcher” problem, or is there genuine value to be drawn from this alternative source of information?

A New Jersey court of appeal case recently gained the attention of the online legal community when it reversed a judge’s decision on the basis that it relied on evidence drawn from Wikipedia.  The appeal court ruled:

“it is entirely possible for a party in litigation to alter a Wikipedia article, print the article and thereafter offer it in support of any given position.  Such a malleable source of information is inherently unreliable and clearly not one ‘whose accuracy cannot reasonably be questioned,’” such as would support judicial notice under New Jersey Evidence Rule 201(b)(3).”

Source: Wikipedia.org:Researching with Wikipedia

This is certainly not the only time Wikipedia has been used as a source of reference or evidence in a US or indeed in an Australian court (eg [2008] 78 IPR 41 or [2006] FMCAfam 238).  A sign of poor research skills?  Not necessarily.  A wise lawyer or judge who cites Wikipedia would only use it for general reference and definitions and/or in conjunction with supporting evidence or sources.  This is in fact what Wikipedia itself recommends .  A review of the examples cited will support this trend, whereas the New Jersey case had no other supporting source for the issue at hand.  Lawyers are aware of the dangers of citing Wikipedia: only 20% of respondents felt Wikipedia had more than moderate professional value compared to 38% of respondents overall.  So if Wikipedia is definitely not a quality Web 2.0 source, what is?

Slaw.ca is a blog that reports and analyses new developments in Canadian law and law in general.  It is a co-operative blog written by law professors, legal associates, the director of a law society, law librarians and law students.  In other words, people well qualified to provide quality professional commentary on legal developments.  In fact, Slaw is deemed to be of such high quality that the Canadian Association of Law Librarians awarded it the 2009 Hugh Lawford Award for Excellence in Legal Publishing.

Wikipedia and Slaw represent two extremes of the spectrum of information available from Web 2.0 sources.  In between lies an enormous variety of blogs, wikis, tweet streams and other sources of varying quality and currency.  Enter the librarian.  This is an opportunity for us to do what we have always done: sift through the mass of materials available and identify those that are most relevant to our clients.  More importantly, we need to educate our users on sourcing and assessing these materials for themselves.

Tomorrow I will look at Maureen Henniger’s evaluation criteria for an information source and how the transparency of Web 2.0 culture actually makes it relatively easy to assess the validity and accuracy of a source.

It was reported recently from across the Tasman that Greens in New Zealand have called for the introduction of a capital gains tax. Incidentally New Zealand is one of rare breed of countries in the OECD  that does not have CGT. It is claimed by the Greens that the tax would raise sufficient revenue enabling  lowering of  income tax rates.
Governments in New Zealand, both Labour and National  have been consistently wary of CGT. But will the exploding deficit and expanding stimulus packages spur the Government to take a fresh look at introducing capital gains tax in New Zealand?

The article “ Capital gains tax debate heats up” published in the Sunday Star Times quotes Auckland University tax policy and law professor Craig Eliffe as claiming that a capital gains tax would raise $ 1.36 b.  In support of his position the article quotes him as saying that under the present New Zealand tax system, it was wrong that a salary earner would pay $ 38,000 tax on a $ 100,000 salary, while a $ 100,000 realised property gain would pay no tax. Turning to GST, Eliffe draws attention to the regressive nature of GST and expresses concerns about an increase in the GST rate delivering a significant blow to an economy either  in , or recovering from a recession. Currently GST in New Zealand is at 12.5% and there are calls by those opposing CGT to increase the GST rate  to 15%, which is thought to raise $ 2 b in government revenue. This is as against $ 1.3 b if CGT is introduced.

While in America, a country where capital gains tax is entrenched in the tax psyche , a Republican stalwart and former Speaker of the U.S House of Representatives, Newt Gingrich  argues for the repeal of the tax. In an article “ Capital Gains Tax: An Argument for Repeal”, appearing in “The American”( journal of the American Enterprise Institute)  Gingrich (jointly written with Emily Renwick) says that the tax is an unequivocal burden on the capital the U.S needs to grow , prosper and compete in a 21st Century economy. In support of its stand the article even refers to the former Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan as having said that if you want the highest economic growth rate the best capital gains tax rate is zero.

In all this swirling arguments and counter arguments  is there is a soothing message for the Australian taxpayer?

A couple of weeks ago I attended a social media discussion hosted by the Hargraves Institute. Telstra’s Get Social Advice team facilitated and 30 or so people attended in Sydney and Melbourne via video link up.

The aim was to demystify social media and demonstrate how engagement in social media can build better relationships with customers, leading to improvement in revenue. We were reminded that social media has been around for years but the difference is now it’s more visible. This can make is seem more intimidating; after all one definition of social media is “opinion on the public record”. Not everyone wants to go public.

A key point that resonated with me was the power of community. How best to define community in a social media context? Well, for Gavin Heaton, when you are in a community people miss you when you are not there. Gavin, widely recognised as a thought leader in the marketing industry as well as one of the leading social media influencers in Australia, writes at his popular blog www.servantofchaos.com.
He had been blogging for a few years when his father in law had a bike accident and he had to go offline for a couple of weeks to deal with this family emergency. When he got back to his blog he was very surprised to find he’d been missed by his regular readers.  In fact not only had he been missed but his online community had raised money to help his father in law out. He found this very powerful and it changed the way he perceived his blog and that of community. He had been blogging quite anonymously, not divulging his name or any personal details. That all changed after this experience and he realized that sharing real life personal experiences, photos etc in your blog is really important in making it appealing.

So that was the other insight for me: personality is important for a blog. Seems obvious but can be challenging, especially for a ‘corporate’ blog. For a blog such as CCHatter it is important to have multiple, real voices and not just PR voices. At the social media discussion Gavin Heaton made the point that a blog is a bit like the ‘making of” or “behind the scenes” extras on a DVD – you want to give people some understanding of what is really going on in your life or at your company. That’s what we are attempting to do in CCHatter. Offering some background on what it can be like to publish a new book or be a tax writer hopefully sheds some light on CCH people and how and why things happen.

The blogging bug is catching on at CCH.  One of our tax writers has written the post below focussing on the current financial crisis exclusively for CCHatter.
- Linda

In his recent book “The 86 Biggest Lies on Wall Street” John Talbott disagrees with the contention that tax cuts will stimulate economic development and increase tax revenues. According to Talbott the idea that tax cuts would increase the tax revenue is ‘almost laughable’.

Arthur Laffer’s idea on the interaction between tax cuts and tax revenue was based on the combined outcome of two effects: the arithmetic and economic effects. The arithmetic effect results in tax revenue falling with  cuts in tax rates and vice versa. The economic effect has the opposite outcome. It increases economic activity and thus leads to increased tax revenue. Depending on the size of the two effects, tax revenue may increase or decrease if a cut is made in tax rates.  (N.B.: Laffer was a member of President Reagan’s Economic Policy Advisory Board.)

In his article entitled “The Laffer Curve: Past, Present, and Future“ published in 2004 by the Heritage Foundation,  Laffer cites three periods of tax-cuts in the U.S as supporting his assertions; the Harding-Coolidge cuts in the mid 1920’s, the Kennedy cuts in the mid 1960’s and the Reagan cuts of the early 1980’s.  What is lost in the argument is the significance of the tax base. To quote from the article:

“At a tax rate of 0 percent, the government would collect no tax revenues, no matter how large the tax base. Likewise, at a tax rate of 100 percent, the government would also collect no tax revenues because no one would be willing to work for an after-tax wage of zero (i.e., there would be no tax base). Between these two extremes there are two tax rates that will collect the same amount of revenue: a high tax rate on a small tax base and a low tax rate on a large tax base.”

The periods referred to by Laffer in his article were times when the U.S. was the last superpower standing.  Russia was on the back foot and Europe was experiencing  growing pains associated with expansion of the European Union. Asian giants  (China and India) have stirred but  were not galloping as now. The Dollar was dominant in the world markets and globalization has not kicked off, at least not at the current pace. But with unemployment rising and decimating the tax base in the U.S should not the Laffer hypothesis be viewed in that context?
In support of his opposing view that cuts in tax rates do not necessarily increase  the tax revenue, Talbott argues that because of his tax cuts Bush turned a $ 250 billion operating surplus from the Clinton administration into a $ 1.2 trillion operating annual deficit. This figure could very well top $ 2 trillion thanks to the Obama stimulus packages.

Isn’t there a major factor that is ignored in the debate: the  massive spending  in the U.S in the last decade or so.  Spiraling spending distorted the picture and led to massive deficits, despite the tax revenue.  Various global ventures in South East Asia and the Middle East  contributed to the burgeoning deficit in the U.S..  The book “The Three Trillion Dollar War” by Joseph Stiglitz and Linda Bilmes  says it all. As a matter of fact in the last decade U.S Government debt has doubled from $ 5 trillion to nearly $ 11 trillion. 

Could it still be argued that Laffer hypothesis is  fundamentally right?  If the existing tax  rates are higher than normal and the prevailing conditions favor economic activity it appears safe to  conclude that  tax revenue will increase eventually even if there is a tax cut. But unfortunately with  economic activity stalling and  unemployment increasing , tax cuts alone will not stimulate the economy and rake in tax revenue. Governments need to employ other measures to achieve a growing economy and hence increasing tax revenue.

Tax revenue in the U.S and Australia has been steadily growing. Taking the years 2000 to 2008, total internal revenue collected in 2008 in the U.S  is 1.3 times that in 2000  whereas in Australia it is 1.6 times. Is this sufficient reason to embark upon a round of significant tax cuts or should governments continue to fill the state coffers to ward off future distress?

The Federal Government in Australia has introduced two new measures to boost the economy: Investment tax breaks and improved small business capital gains tax concessions.

Investment tax break rules allow deduction in respect of investments made by businesses. These measures will allow businesses to invest for the future and yet claim tax relief in respect of their expenditure. Without merely cutting the tax rates these measures are expected to enhance economic activity, increase the tax base by increasing employment and consequently increase tax revenue.

Tax cuts alone will not have the desired effect.

Every now and then this research turns up some really interesting results – as with our latest whitepaper, “Professionals and Electronic Document Management” (EDM).  In this case it’s a really strong example of how the reality of EDM exceeds all expectations.

We asked people who are considering the implementation of an EDM system whether they expect it to provide a significant increase in efficiency and productivity.  31.6% believed it would.

When we asked people who have already implemented an EDM system if it significantly increased efficiency and productivity, a whopping 72.8% said yes.  That’s more than double the expectations of those considering EDM.

Efficiency and productivity are not the only benefits of EDM.  You can see some of the other benefits and what our respondents thought of them in the graph below.  In the whitepaper we also ask respondents how EDM can improve other aspects of a business, such as assisting the management of Governance, Risk and Compliance and facilitating working remotely.

Source: Professionals and Electronic Document Management, CCH 2009

At the moment only 40% of our respondents (primarily medium and small professional firms) have implemented a comprehensive EDM system.  Where does your business stand when it comes to Electronic Document Management?  Do you have it all sorted from scanning documents in to sending out electronic invoices?  Maybe you’re more like most of our respondents, managing a number of documents online but still keeping a few filing cabinets out back. 

If you’re considering EDM but are not convinced that it will be worth the effort, I encourage you to read what our respondents had to say – and see how the reality really does beat all expectations.