Tax Research and Writing

Catalog description

This course examines how a tax professional should approach researching tax law and communicating research conclusions. The course will consider and, in many cases, look at actual examples of the different sources for tax law research, including common electronic tax databases. The objective of this course is intended to provide a methodology to (a) identify and find primary and secondary sources of the tax law, (b) analyze the sources, and (c) communicate analysis and conclusions. This course will cover the full range of tax research techniques including statutory interpretation and legislative history, administrative interpretation including regulations, published rulings and letter rulings (including an analysis of the relative weight accorded to each), judicial authority (including use of citators and other means to check current status of decisional law) and computerized legal research. Problems and research projects will be assigned for work outside of class.