Research Guides: Federal Income Tax Research Sources: Internal Revenue Code

Is The IRS Code Current?

IRC Incorporating Revisions Needed by 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act
The Office of Law Revision Counsel has made the revisions needed to Title 26 of the U.S. Code, which is the Internal Revenue Code, that were needed due to the passage of the 2017 tax reform. This site updates the code as needed by new laws.

Sources of federal tax law

Federal tax laws come from four sources:

Tax treaties agreed to and signed between the United States and another country.
Legislation enacted by the U.S. Congress (the U.S. Senate and the U.S. House of Representatives), and signed into law by the President. Tax laws become part of the U.S. Code, of which Title 26 is the Internal Revenue Code (the "IRC" or "the Code").

Administrative laws

The U.S. Department of Treasury is the executive department responsible for implementing tax laws.

The Internal Revenue Service (IRS), a bureau within the Treasury Department, issues documents for interpreting the IRC and enforcing tax laws--regulations to letters commenting on specific transactions. Many of these documents are called regulations.

Judicial decisions are reached by opinions issued by a court. Courts include the Supreme Court of the United States, the U.S. Tax Court, the Court of Federal Claims, Federal Appellate Courts, and federal district courts.

What Newman databases offer these sources?

CCH Intelliconnect: Select Federal Tax Resources

Thomson Reuters Checkpoint

Bloomberg Tax

Need an earlier Internal Revenue Code (IRC)?

The major tax codifications are the IRC of 1939, 1954, 1986 and 2018.

Annual editions have been published.

CCH Intelliconnect
Locate previous IRC by selecting Federal Tax, then Federal Tax Achives, and then the code for the year(s) you are researching.

Bloomberg Tax
(Baruch users only)
Before you can use this database, you must first be on campus and use the Academic Self Registration page to set your own account.

Federal and state court decisions, rulings and regulations on income, estates and gifts, foreign income, and real estate taxes; tax planning sources for international taxes; and BNA TAX portfolios explaining these topics; federal tax forms and tax related news.

IRC Research Tips

Tax has many "terms of art" and some ordinary words, such as "person" have special meanings.
Look for defintions that apply to a section or sub-section. §7701 of the IRC has more than 50 definitions of commonly used terms.
When an agency other than the Treasury Department has primary responsibility for an area of law, you will need to check laws of that agency that relate to tax.