Federal Tax Research:
Legislation & Treaties
[Commercial links in teal only accessible to subscribers]
[Last updated 4/30/2008]

Return to Table of Contents Page
See also Congress, Agencies, Publications, & Forms

Tax Code Locations
♦  United States Code  (Office of Law Revision Counsel)  Browse, keyword, or citation search. 
♦  United States Code  (Cornell)  Browse, keyword, or citation search; Table of Popular Names. 
♦  Internal Revenue Code on Westlaw (26 USCA) or LexisNexis (26 USCS) (require subscriber ID).  Annotated versions are linked.

Updating the Code & Text of Public Laws
♦  Updating the U.S. Code (Off. of Law Revision Counsel)  Classification Tables 1995-2008. 
♦  Public Laws & Congress  (Thomas)  Public laws & bills beginning 1973, committee reports from the 1995 forward, and selected hearings. 
♦  Public Laws (GPO)  Texts begin  1995.  Browse or keyword search. Current session laws are default page. Link to prior years under "Previous Congresses."

Legislative History Documents
♦  House and Senate committee reports, and Senate Executive Reports (GPO);  from 104th Cong. (1995) forward.  Numerical or keyword search.
♦  House & Senate committee documents, including Senate Executive Documents and Senate Treaty Documents; from 104th Cong. (1995) forward. (GPO)  Numerical or keyword search. 
♦   Congressional conference reports, current and archival (GPO Access).  Unofficial text of reports from current session of Congress and official texts of reports from earlier sessions beginning with 109th Cong., 1st Sess. (2005-  ).  Access to current and earlier reports is through the link to the "Launch Current Congress."
♦  Congressional Record (Thomas)  Begins 1989.  Link in the left-hand menu.  Extensive search options.  The Congressional Record also on Westlaw and LexisNexis access.  (Both begin 1985). (Require ID.) [Note: Westlaw and LexisNexis are not updated with Cong. Rec. bound volume page numbers.  Retain daily edition page numbers.]
♦  History of Bills and Resolutions index of the Cong. Rec. (GPO).  From vol. 129 (1983) forward.  Only indexes from 1993 forward contain the Cong. Rec. page and date information.
♦  Federal tax legislative history documents. Westlaw keyword searchable; selected committee reports from 1948-1989.  All committee reports 1990-forward.  Westlaw link to Joint Committee on Taxation Blue Books.  (Requires ID.)  LexisNexis file begins 1954 and combines committee bills & reports, blue books, text of public laws, and proposed legislation. (Requires ID.)
♦  Joint Committee on Taxation.  Index of publications from 1981 under "publications" tab.  Full text publications from 1992. ("Bluebooks")  See "Bluebook" link for citations to selected reports back to 1970, but only a few in full text.
♦  LexisNexis Congressional.  Commercial database/index for legislative history research. (Accessible to SMU law students through Library's Research Tools--Find Articles & Databases page.)

Tax Treaties and Documents,
♦  U.S. Tax Treaties (IRS)  Bilateral treaties by country. (PDF format); and Tax Treaty Documents (Treasury Dept.)  Texts of conventions, amending protocols, hearing testimony, press releases, technical explanations.
♦  U.S. Model Income Tax Convention  (Treasury Dept.)   2006 model convention and its technical explanation in PDF format are in the list of other tax treaty documents. 
♦  Senate Treaty Documents (104th Cong.--  , 1995-- ). (GPO).  Keyword searchable page or access by browsing.  NOTE: Browsing lists are arranged in order of  House, Senate, and then treaty documents.

Tax Reform
♦  President's Advisory Panel on Federal Tax Reform including link to final report.