LEGISLATION
Federal legislation is codified in 1itle 26 of the unannotated United State Code (USC). Both commercial versions of the Code, the United States Code Annotated (USCA) and the United States Code Service (USCS), feature the text, annotations to court decisions, regulations, citations to law review articles, and legislative history materials.
Older printed verstions of the United States Code are located at KF62.1994, the United States Code Annotated at KF62.1927.W45, and the United States Code Service at KF62.A3.L38.
For the most recent version of the United States Code, especially Title 26, please visit http://uscode.house.gov/, or its counterparts on Lexis and Westlaw, among other services.
Looseleaf Services
These publications are designed as an integrated tax research system. Organized to following each Internal Revenue Code section, these sets print the full text of related proposed, temporary, and final regulations issued by the Treasury Department, as well as relevant court decisions, Revenue Rulings and Procedures. Because they're in looseleaf format, they're updated more frequently than USCA and uses.
The three major sets are:
Standard Federal Tax Reporter (CCH Vitallaw), KF6285.S72
United States Tax Reporter (RIA), KF6285.P741
Tax Management Portfolios (BNA) KF6285.A1 T35
Portfolios for U.S. Income, Estates, Gifts, and Trusts; and U.S. International (transfer pricing) provide expertise one portfolio per tax topic. There are many more for accountants, which the law library does not collect.
CCH Internet Tax Research Network (IntelliConnect àOmnitax à Cheetah à Vitallaw)
Contains virtually all of the primary tax resources with CCH's superb commentary. CCH Vitallaw's State tab links to all of the state tax material one is likely to need. Searchable by citation, keyword, and boolean searching, this is as close as one can come to one-stop tax research.
Lexis, please see, especially, Lexis Tax
Westlaw à Practice Area à Tax
all offer extensive and comprehensive access to federal tax materials, including superseded versions of the Codes.
Don’t forget HeinOnline, for older, valuable tax material.
See, especially,
HeinOnlineàTax Foundation Archive Publications
Taxation & Economic Reform in America Parts I & II
ADMINISTRATIVE RULINGS AND INTERPRETATIONS
IRS Regulations
Tax regulations appear first as Treasury Decisions (Treas. Dec.) and are issued by the Treasury Department to interpret and guide the Internal Revenue Service on how to carry out the Internal Revenue Code.
Proposed, temporary, and final regulations are promulgated:.
Temporary and final regulations are published as "Treasury Decisions" (T.D.) A T.D. number merely indicates the order in which the regulation is issued and has no other significance. Proposed regulations are not assigned T.D. numbers, and are called "Notice of Proposed Rulemaking." Regulations are found in the following sources:
Proposed, Temporary, and Final Regulations all appear first in the Federal Register (F.R.). The Federal Register is published by the Government Printing Office every business day of every year. This is a link to today’s table of contents of the Federal Register. 1 F.R. 1 is dated March 14, 1936; volumes are numbered consecutively from 1936, and pages consecutively from the first through the last business days of the year.
Final Regulations are also found in Title 26 of the Code of Federal Regulations, Title 26 (KF70.A3 C63).
Revenue Rulings
Revenue Rulings are applications of law by the IRS to facts presented by the taxpayer to the IRS for a ruling. These Rulings can be used as precedent by other taxpayers on similar facts and are intended to bind all taxpayers having the same tax issue as that covered in the Revenue Ruling..
Rulings are assigned chronological numbers. For example, Rev. Rul. 97-16 was the 16th Ruling issued in 1997, Rev. Rul. 2020-002, the second in 2020.
Revenue Rulings are published in the IR Bulletin and Cumulative Bulletin, the Daily Tax Report, Tax Analysts, Daily Tax Highlights and Documents.
Each of the expensive online legal-database services has a separate database of Revenue Rulings.
Revenue Procedures
Revenue Procedures are rulings and statements of IRS practices and procedures intended to have general applicability. These tell us how to proceed on matters before the IRS, such as applying for other advisory opinions.
Like Revenue Rulings, they are assigned chronological numbers and can be found in the the Internal Revenue Bulletin, and in specific databases in the big online services..
Letter Rulings (LTRs) are applications of law issued by the IRS at taxpayer or IRS-agent request, usually for a proposed transaction, which are not published in the IR Bulletin. These are privately published, originally obtained through a Freedom of Information Act request. Letter rulings are useful for ascertaining how the IRS might rule in particular fact and indicate how the IRS is likely to decide on a similar issue in the future. These are useful for the list of authorities on which a taxpayer might rely in order to avoid penalties. Otherwise, letter rulings are not to be viewed as precedential. Letter Rulings are found in the Letter Rulings Reporter (CCH) KF6289.A353, as well as in the other secondary sources cited below.
Examples of Letter Rulings include:
PLR or Private Letter Rulings, sought by taxpayer. The PLR binds IRS and taxpayer on the issue analyzed.
TAM or Technical Advice Memoranda, sought by an agent.
FSA, or Field Service Advice, sought by IRS agent
CCA, or Chief Counsel Advice, internal legal opinion
GCM, or General Counsel Memoranda, internal legal opinion
AOD, or Actions on Decision are legal memoranda prepared by the Tax Litigation Division attorneys which describe why the IRS has decided not to follow a court ruling adverse to the position or reasoning of the IRS. As an administrative agency, the IRS considers itself the expert in the area it regulates, and the IRS expects deference to be paid it by the courts. The IRS will never issue a non-acquiescence against an opinion of the U.S. Supreme Court, but it will with other courts.
The foregoing administrative documents can be found in Bloomberglaw, Lexis, Westlaw, and Vitallaw. Not all are available free of charge online.
Court Decisions
Because the IRS feels it can disagree with a court’s decision on a federal tax issue, and issue a non-aqcuiescense to indicate it intends to continue to litigate, there is some discussion about whether court decisions dealing with tax issues are truly primary authority, rather than interpretive.
U.S. Tax Court, formerly, the Bureau of Tax Appeals, or BTA.
The Tax Court of the United States (TC) is a single, trial court whose judges are appointed by the President to 15-year terms. Candidates are vetted by the Senate Finance Committee, not the Judiciary. The Tax Court operates under the authority of 26 USC 7441. Its 19 judges travel to about 60 cities during the year, and consist of judges, senior judges, and special trial judges. The taxpayer must receive a 90-day letter and then sue in Tax Court to resolve the dispute. There is no jury. Appeals are to the Circuit Court of Appeal for the Circuit in which the taxpayer resides, unless the IRS and taxpayer stipulate to another.
Opinions include regular opinions and memorandum opinions, each having the same weight in precedent.
Regular decisions of the Tax Court are officially published in the United States Tax Court Reports, KF6324.AS.A22, in print, and appear in the appropriate databases in the big services.
Regular and memorandum decisions of the Tax Court appear in the Tax Court Reporter (CCH) KF6324.AS.C6 and RIA's Tax Court Reporter and Memorandum Decisions KF6324.A6.T39.
Other federal courts that deal with tax matters include district courts, which can hear matters involving a federal question (F. Supp.);
the United States Claims Court, which can hear any monetary claim against the United States (Ct. Cl.),
circuit courts of appeal (F., F.2d, F.3d), and
the Supreme Court of the United States, which is not final because it is infallible, but infallible only because [we] are final. –Robert Jackson, J. Brown v. Allen, 344 US 443, at 533 (1953).
CURRENT AWARENESS:
These two are well respected, but there are many more.
Tax Notes, one of a series of similarly entitled periodicals published by Tax Analysts.
LEGISLATIVE HISTORY
Points to remember:
“Legislative Intent” is what the court wants to determine from evidence that appears in documents that consist of a bill’s legislative history. “Legislative intent” and “legislative history”, though different concepts, have become interchangeable among practitioners.
Tax bills must generally clear three Congressional committees before facing the votes of the full House and Senate to become an enrolled bill: the House Ways and Means Committee, the Senate Finance Committee, and the Joint Committee on Taxation (the Conference Committee, usually numbered as a House Conference Report). The Committee Reports are the documents to locate when assembling evidence of what the legislature intended. Committee reports are documents of persuasion, often arguing the best expression of public policy reasoning Congress might provide, with a heavy emphasis on “might”.
Committee reports and other legislative commentary can be found in:
Internal Revenue Bulletin KF6301.A35.A2. Published weekly online, no longer in print, the IR Bulletin's Part II(B) contains current tax legislation and related committee reports. Not well indexed, the IR Bulletin's Finding Lists are helpful once you have a citation. Better, please see https://www.irs.gov/irb
Cumulative Bulletin KF6301.A35.A2. A museum piece. This was the bound compilation of the Internal Revenue Bulletin. Tax legislation and related committee reports are usually published in the third volume. Again, not well indexed, but the Tables of Contents are fairly detailed. See also the Finding Lists, located in the front of each volume.
BNA's Daily Tax Report contains current legislation, committee descriptions of the contents of tax legislation, and provides a detailed legislative calendar, with citations to committee reports, bills, and resolutions.
CCH / Vitallaw's Standard Federal Tax Reporter. While the Standard Federal Tax Reporter does not contain the text of Congressional committee reports, Cumulative Bulletin citations to committee reports are provided in the Citator Volume M-Z in the Finding Lists. The Finding List gives the Internal Revenue Code section number amended that year, followed by the related public law number and the location of relevant committee reports in the Cumulative Bulletin.
Westlaw’s Legislative History materials are all but unsurpassed.
Lexis offers access to documents from the Congressional Information Service, which has published every document Congress has issued since 1969. CIS cost this library $40,000 per year as late as 2010. Lexis no longer offers CIS to law schools. Instead, Lexis brags about its database of Committee Reports. Can we search these by Public Law Number? Of course not.
Lexis’s anti-customer reasoning argues, when the resolution was in committee, it was not a public law yet, so it didn’t have a public law number. This means, the researcher must first locate the main bill that was eventually enacted, keeping in mind that much legislation combines multiple bills before they are harmonized into the main bill that passes both houses of Congress. Lexis forgets that no one cares about legislative intent until provisions of a public law are being litigated, at which time the litigants all have code sections and the public law numbers from which they were codified. But Lexis wants us to spend time looking for bill numbers to use as search terms for its committee reports.
I use the time I could have squandered looking for and sifting bill numbers by instead following the legislative history links that Westlaw provides for most of its code sections and public laws.
See, also: Vitallaw’s Federal Tax - Major Tax Acts and Reports (1986-2022)
TREATIES
CCH Vitallaw's TAX TREATIES, in print at KF6306.US4 is a looseleaf service providing CCH's detailed Topical Index, Case Table, and Finding Lists of Rulings and of Senate Executive Documents. Each binder is organized by country, and tabbed for quick access.
See, also, Vitallaw’s U.S. Tax Treaties Reporter, Tax Treaties Topical Index, and Tax Treaties Report Letters.
Matthew Bender publishes Rhoades and Langer, U.S. International Taxation and Tax Treaties, located at KF6306.R48, also available online through Lexis.