tax-law legal-research
How to research tax law?
<p>I have done legal research before, but mostly on criminal law and civil claims/torts.</p>

<p>Tax law is a whole nother beast. First of all, most of it is not actually laws at all, but regulations. And it is a ginormous mass of stuff which is particularly technical and hard to parse.</p>

<p>If I wanted to research particular topics in tax law, what would be the right approach. Are there specific types of official guides that can make the problem easier, sort of a Cliff Notes of tax law?</p>

<p>This depends on your objective.</p>

<p>If you want to <em>comply</em> with tax law, then you essentially want to ensure that you are following the rules promulgated by the executive agency responsible for enforcing it.  E.g., for U.S. federal taxes you would start with <a href="https://www.irs.gov/forms-pubs" rel="nofollow noreferrer">IRS publications</a>.</p>

<p>But, as you note, there is an often broad chasm between how the IRS has chosen to translate tax law into rules (e.g., <a href="https://apps.irs.gov/app/picklist/list/internalRevenueBulletins.html" rel="nofollow noreferrer">IRBs</a> and Forms) and regulations (i.e., <a href="https://www.gpo.gov/fdsys/search/pagedetails.action?collectionCode=CFR&amp;searchPath=Title+26%2FChapter+I&amp;granuleId=CFR-2012-title26-vol1-toc-id2&amp;packageId=CFR-2012-title26-vol1&amp;oldPath=Title+26%2FTOC&amp;fromPageDetails=true&amp;collapse=true&amp;ycord=0" rel="nofollow noreferrer">26 CFR</a>), and what the law actually says.  If your objective is to look for breaks between the former and the latter then you also need to jump into the tax code (which, for the U.S., is <a href="https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/26" rel="nofollow noreferrer">Title 26</a>).  And, of course, if your objective is to potentially <em>challenge</em> the executive agency for misapplication of the code, you'd also do well to familiarize yourself with relevant case law.  In the U.S., fortunately, a lot of that is consolidated in the <a href="https://www.ustaxcourt.gov/" rel="nofollow noreferrer">U.S. Tax Court</a>.</p>
