Sarah Lawsky (Northwestern; Google Scholar):

As the spring term and new year are approaching, I wanted to let you know that the make-your-own Code and regulations website now contains the law current through December 5, 2024, and therefore should be ready for books for this spring's classes. The inflation adjustment revenue procedure for 2025 is also now included, and the cover page, introduction, etc., reflect that the PDF produced is for 2025 tax classes.

I've also now added the estate and gift taxation regulations as well as income taxation regulations, so you can use the website for your estate and gift tax classes as well as the introductory federal income tax class, partnership tax, corporate tax, and so forth.

Here are Sarah's FAQs:

Q: What exactly is in this Selected Sections book?
A: The default items included in this 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 inflation-adjusting Revenue Procedure for 2025 (Rev. Proc. 2024-40), 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 and are current through December 5, 2024. The regulation sections are from the eCFR and are current through December 5, 2024.

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 Fourth, they may go out of date quickly, as the law might change in any given year, and inflation adjustments do change year-to-year.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 don't have a list of all the sections I need. Do you have spreadsheets that people use for various actual tax classes, so I can generate a book for myself anyway?
A: Yes. Keeping in mind that of course not everyone assigns the same sections for every class, so these may not include all of what you need and may also have extra sections you don't need (indeed, that's part of what motivated this project), here are spreadsheets from law professors for Selected Sections books for, respectively, Federal Income Tax; Corporate Tax; Partnership Tax; and Estate and Gift Tax.

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 created for my Basic Tax class 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.

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