Following up on last month's post, Lawsky Website With Practice Problems And Quizzes For Federal Income Tax:  Sarah Lawsky (Northwestern; Google Scholar) has added a new feature that allows users to download a FREE Internal Revenue Code and Regulations Selected Sections (PDF) as well as a customizable version with only the code and regs that are relevant for your class. This site works for any tax class, not just federal income tax, because it is draws from the entire  Title 26 code and a large number of the Title 26 regs.

I should note that commercially prepared selected sections will still have some advantages (for example, I wasn't able to put footers on the pages with the citation that's on that page; there may be one or two weird page breaks when you generate the PDF; and this does take a small amount of labor on your part because you have to make an Excel spreadsheet that lists out all the code and reg sections you use; etc.), so it's a matter of weighing the price and customization vs. those advantages. For what it's worth, I've been using an early version of this project to provide customized code and reg books for my students for the last year or so, and I give them the option of this book and the commercial book. Some students prefer the commercial book, some students prefer the printed, bound version of this book, (see explanation below), and some students prefer the PDF of this book on their computer—it's about a third for each.

Here are Sarah's FAQs:

Q: What exactly is in this Selected Sections book?
A: The default list of items included in this Selected Sections book are

• the sections and subsections of the Code and regulations that you select, with bookmarks in the PDF for each section,
• an edited table of contents for the whole IRC,
• the current inflation-adjusting Revenue Procedure (Rev. Proc. 2022-38), and
• excerpts from Rev. Proc. 87-57, the depreciation tables.

Q: Where is the content coming from?
A: The Code sections contained in this book are from the Office of Law Revision Counsel. The regulation sections are from the eCFR.

Q: Why did you do this?
A: Internal Revenue Code and regulation sections are the most important reading for any federal income taxation course. There are four problems with commercial selected Code and regs books. First, commercial selected sections books are expensive: $100 or more for information that is freely available. Second, they are too long: they contain far more sections than any one class needs, because they are trying to meet the needs of a whole range of classes. Third, they are too short: it's very likely that any given professor will want to assign some sections that aren't in a commercially edited book. Fourth, they may go out of date quickly, as the law might change in any given year, and inflation adjustments do change year-to-year.

In contrast, this Selected Sections is available for free; you can use this website to have the book include exactly the sections and subsections relevant for your class; and it is easy to update as the law and year change.

Q:I like a hard copy better.
A: Me too. Luckily, in addition to the "printing out the PDF" option, there are a number of options for nicely-bound hard copies of PDFs print-on-demand for cost, maybe even including your school's bookstore or copy center. For example, you can buy a bound hard copy of the Selected Sections PDF I linked to above for cost at Lulu.com, just because I uploaded it there (it doesn't cost anything to upload it, and I don't get any money if you buy it).

Q:What are those long strings of numbers in the file name of the Selected Sections book I downloaded?
A: That is the Unix timestamp of the moment you generated that Selected Sections book. You can translate that into a more comprehensible date by entering that number into a converter. For example, there's a file in my downloads called SelectedSections.1687277065.726598.pdf. When I put 1687277065.726598 into the converter, it tells me I generated that particular Selected Sections book on Tuesday, June 20, 2023 4:04:25.726 PM Greenwich Mean Time.