Steven M' Foulks

1
Legal Environment

• Steven M. Foulks

2
Introduction

• The tax law is a mosaic of statutory provisions,
  administrative pronouncements, and court
  decisions.
• Today we will briefly introduce the various
  components that can be said to comprise the
  sources of knowledge which form the basis for our
  income tax system.
• If we were to add a course to our curriculum -
  tax research would be its name

3
Agenda

• Governmental sources of our tax law
• Legislative
• Executive
• Judicial
• Non governmental sources (secondary sources)
• Doing tax research

4
Overview

• The end goal of most tax research is a solution
  to a specific taxpayer problem?
• Where do we start?
• How do we proceed?
• Hopefully we will answer that question today.

5
Government structure

• Which are more authoritative?
• Transaction vs. code section orientation

6
Court Structure - trial courts

• If you cant agree with IRS, should you file a
  petition to go to court?
• Differences in the trial courts
• Number of courts
• Location of court
• Number of judges
• Jurisdictional issues (i.e., types of cases,
  payment of deficiency
• Appeal procedures

7
Court Structure - trial courts

• Ultimately what is the most important factor in
  deciding where to file your lawsuit?
• Small Claims tax court - differences
• How often do taxpayers win?

8
Court Structure - appellate courts

• When does the government appeal?
• What appellate court do you appeal to?
• Matters of fact verses law
• Possible decisions by court
• remand, reverse, affirm

9
Court Structure - Supreme court

• What types of tax cases do these justices hear?
• Cases where different appellate courts have
  decided similar cases differently
• Novel, important cases (fast-tracked)
• Very few tax cases are heard

10
Court terminology and citations

• Precedents
• Acquiescence (non)
• Where can you find court decisions?
• How can you tell the history of a case (i.e.,
  whether it has been cited in another dase, if it
  has cited another case, etc.)

11
Secondary sources of information

• These are non authoritative sources of
  information
• Textbooks such as ours
• IRS publications for taxpayers
• Services (the starting point for tax research)
• everything in one spot
• code vs. transaction orientation
• Tax periodicals

12
Tax research and tax planning

• See layout in text
• The authors definition is off base, but he does
  somewhat redeem himself.
• Tax planning is a process of minimizing the the
  reduction in wealth due to tax considerations
• Computer assisted research