Federal Tax Law Research: Tips on Locating Tax Cases That Relate to a Specific Code Section, Topic, CFR Part, or IRS Document
Tips on Locating Tax Cases That Relate to a Specific Code Section, Topic, CFR Part, or IRS Document
By Code Section:
- Looseleafs such as the Standard Federal Tax Reporter and the United States Tax Reporter contain case annotations for code sections.
- Annotated codes such as the U.S.C.A. or U.S.C.S. have case annotations beneath the text of the code section.
- KeyCite on Westlaw and Shepard's on Lexis provide case citations for cases that cite a code section. Click here for information on how to use KeyCite and Shepard's with code citations.
- Shepard’s Federal Tax Citator (KF 6280.5.S46) lists cases that discuss a particular code section. Like other works in the Shepard’s series, it provides citations and treatment codes but no summaries of cases.
- Search in an online source, such as a combined tax database on Westlaw (FTX-CSRELS or FTX-CS) or Lexis (FEDTAX;CASREL or FEDTAX;CASES), for tax cases by using the code section as the search term. Remember to limit the search by date and jurisdiction as dictated by the parameters of your assignment.
By Topic:
- Use a looseleaf service such as the Standard Federal Tax Reporter or the United States Tax Reporter to find cases by topic.
- Use a combined tax database on Westlaw (FTX-CSRELS or FTX-CS), Lexis (FEDTAX;CASREL or FEDTAX;CASES), CCH Tax Research NetWork (U.S. Tax Cases) or RIA Checkpoint (Federal Tax Cases) and search using keywords.
By CFR Part:
- Use a looseleaf service such as the Standard Federal Tax Reporter or the United States Tax Reporter to find cases by CFR Part.
- Use KeyCite on Westlaw to find cases that cite or discuss a CFR Part. Click here for information on using KeyCite with regulations.
- Use one of the tax databases listed above and use the CFR citation as your search term.
By IRS Document:
- You can Shepardize or KeyCite certain officially published IRS documents such as Private Letter Rulings, Technical Advice Memoranda and Revenue Rulings.
- For a document that is not covered by Shepard’s, the best option is to search online in a large tax database by using the proper citation for the document in quotes as your search term.
- Looseleaf services, such as the Standard Federal Tax Reporter or the United States Tax Reporter, provide finding lists of some officially published IRS documents in their citator volumes. You can also use their online counterparts, CCH Tax Research NetWork and RIA Checkpoint, to locate cases through the "Check Citator" feature and the "Citator 2nd" feature under Find by Citation, respectively.