High Tech Survival.

• Author: Langdon, Larry R.

Cliff Jernigan has produced a highly readable book for TEI members and their staffs - and their bosses outside the tax department. Called High Tech Survival, this new book contains more than 80 brief summaries (one to two pages each) of the major public policy issues facing all of corporate America, with special emphasis on high-tech and biotech issues. There is not one issue area you cannot readily understand in three to five minutes of reading.

Cliff Jernigan is a long-time member of Tax Executives Institute. He is the person who started the immensely successful South Valley Tax Conferences in the early 1980s. At that time, Cliff was Director of Taxes and General Tax Counsel for Advanced Micro Devices, a leading U.S. semiconductor company. Held once a month, these conferences routinely attracted a hundred or more corporate tax practitioners. Out of the success of these meetings evolved TEI's Santa Clara Valley Chapter, which is now among the top Institute chapters in membership, attendance, and innovation. For his efforts, Cliff is justifiably one of the folk heroes' of the Silicon Valley tax community.

In his function as a corporate government affairs professional and chair of the highly respected Silicon Valley Tax Directors Group, Cliff has organized scores of tax and trade staff visits from Washington, D.C., and the California legislature. Each one of these visits brought TEI members in Silicon Valley closer to tax policy issues and helped them build understanding and rapport with congressional and legislative staff.

Tax policy issues account for about one-third of High Tech Survival. Bob Perlman, Intel's Vice President of Taxes, Customs, and Export Licensing (and a former TEI International President) has described the tax portions of the book as the most readable and understandable he has even seen. That may sound like hyperbole, but it is true. The tax explanations take complex tax concepts and put them into language your CEO and management can understand. After reading the tax portions of this book, management will have more awareness of the tax department's planning and compliance roles.

The non-tax chapters of the book (on subjects as varied as sexual harassment, trade policy, and political and charitable giving) are also excellent. Indeed, because a tax professional must have more than just a tax background, the breadth of the book is especially welcome. The tax professional must be multi-dimensional - he or she needs a broad...