Tax Law

This LibGuide lists selected tax law titles available here at DePaul, not only in print but via DePaul Law & DePaul University Library Databases. This guide focuses on federal tax information. Only a few Estate and Gift Taxation & Illinois State tax materials are included as well. 

In addition to materials found in the Library Catalog & in DePaul databases, we have included titles & materials available via the major legal databases (such as Lexis+, Westlaw and Bloomberg Law).

Specific federal tax journals & specific Illinois materials as well as legal study aids dealing with taxation are included as well.

One of the most important features of research is an understanding of the resources that document that topic and their relationship to each other. Tax research in particular requires this understanding. There are several layers of authority, including:

• The Internal Revenue Code (IRC)
• The Regulations issued by the Internal Revenue Service (IRS)
• The various Administrative and Interpretive documents issued by the IRS and the Treasury via the national and district offices
• The various Court Opinions (Tax Court) that rule on the validity of the position taken by the IRS under statutes and regulations
• Congressional Actions and Changes to the Tax Code, including policy and legislative history documents
• And tax treaties or international agreements. (A separate guide on International Tax Law & Tax Treaties is available.) 

These several levels of authority and precedent are interwoven.   

The majority of tax research publications are organized by IRC section, though a few major publications are organized by subject. By and large tax research starts with references to applicable sections of the Code. Even subject-based resources will cite the IRC as one of the first applicable references to an issue. Any researcher would be wise to first locate the applicable Code sections as a starting point. The major tax research publications in print and online will collect all the administrative and judicial documents in their own libraries but will reference them as annotations under the Code.

There are secondary authority sources that can help with analysis. Many of the significant tax treatises provide detailed analysis of the tax laws and are listed/described later in this guide. A second source of commentary is found in law reviews. There is a body of law reviews that are devoted to tax as their primary topic. Many of these can be found in Lexis and Westlaw.

Not surprisingly, tax is one of the areas of law that receives a lot of attention from authors and publishers. General tax analysis is a major area for legal and business publishers. They also sell treatises that focus exclusively on specialized and subject tax issues such as estate and gift tax, corporate tax, S corporations, tax law for non-profit organizations and many more.

There are several standard comprehensive tax research treatises published by Commerce Clearing House (CCH, now part of Wolters Kluwer), the Research Institute of America (RIA, now part of Thomson Reuters) and the Bureau of National Affairs (BNA, now part of Bloomberg) that virtually all large and medium law libraries should have in their collections. They and their electronic counterparts are described in more detail later in this guide.