Message from the Chair

• Publication year: 2021
• Author: Written by Laura L. Buckley

MESSAGE FROM THE CHAIR

Written by Laura L. Buckley

It is an honor to serve as Chair of the Taxation Section of the CLA. I truly appreciate the trust of the Taxation Section's Executive Committee, and am grateful for the efforts this Committee has made during a very difficult period. The Executive Committee continued to meet regularly, through long meetings on Zoom, and we successfully transitioned our in-person conferences to virtual events. We voted to keep the current leadership in place for one year because we realized that very quickly we were going to have an entire Executive Committee made up of people whom had never actually planned one of our in-person events. We will continue to work hard to serve you, and we welcome your involvement at every level. Our website has information pertaining to our Executive Committee, our Standing Committees, and other programs that allow you to get involved with the Section, including the Odyssey Mentorship Program.

I would be remiss if I did not thank the outgoing Chair, Chris Campbell, for all of his hard work and ingenuity in keeping this ship afloat during the Covid-19 pandemic. Not only is Chris smart and dedicated, he is also very fun to work with on a Committee. He brings the party.

You will see that we have a brand new look for our California Tax Lawyer. In an effort to streamline all publications, the CLA has provided templates for the Taxation Section to use. We lobbied to keep our pictures of beautiful and iconic sites throughout California so the change (hopefully) was not too drastic. Thank you to Veronica Long and Adria Price for their work on this project.

Turning now to the Taxation Section's activities, below is a quick recap of recent events and important items for your review.

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• The Estate and Gift Tax standing committee held its annual conference in May 2021, virtually. We did not have an Estate and Gift conference in 2020 due to the uncertainty in March 2020, so we wanted to get back on track this year. In 2019, we had approximately 100 attendees, and at our virtual 2021 conference we had over 60 attendees. The feedback from attendees was that it was a great event, but that they missed being together. We are planning for an in-person Estate and Gift conference in Spring 2022. Thank you to Robin Klomparens and Thomas Giordano-Lascari for coordinating another excellent conference.
• On May 10-11^th, we held our 31^st annual D.C. Delegation, also virtually (we did not send a delegation in 2020). This...