Skip to Main Content

Tax Research

Use this guide as an introduction to researching federal tax questions, for tax policy research and for finding IRS documents and other tax-related materials.

Suggested Research Strategy

1.  To start (in any order):

   a. WestlawNext (WLN)  > Topics > Tax > Secondary (Law Reviews and Treatises)

  •    Search Bittker & Lokken: Federal Taxation of Income, separately for basic introduction to topic
  •    Make sure to use Citing References tab to identify newer articles when viewing an older useful article found in WestlawNext

   b.  National News (New York Times, Wall Street Journal) - if topic is of popular interest

   c.  Think Tanks/Blogs/Web sites - JCT, Tax Policy, blogs, think tanks (these also good for topic finding and honing).  See box to the right for links.

   d.  To get grounding in operation of tax law - Treatises (on WLN or Checkpoint), BNA Portfolios - See Box to the right for links.

2. Follow up references 

3. IRC section on Checkpoint ;  annotated code on WLN, Lexis 

4. Check current developments - BNA News, blogs, Tax notes, think tanks

5. ASK!!!

Tax specific databases

Look for ** in descriptions below for resources that are useful for topic selection.

Access restricted - Hofstra Law users only.  You will be asked to log in using either your name and 700 number or network username and password  in order to access databases in this list.  Use your Lexis or Westlaw username and password.

Tax specific databases/links:

Other legal databases:

Tax Policy Blogs, Think Tanks, Web resources

Listed in order of likely usefulness.