Talk:Internal Revenue Code

Deleted crazed commentary of anon

Poster used the words "socialism" plus an adjective meaning "of a country" which when put together spells NAZI. John wesley 14:38, 9 May 2006 (UTC)

New headings added

I have added some more headings to the article, with conforming textual changes. I have deliberately placed the '54 code and '86 code material under one heading -- to try to show that the 1986 Code was the result of a name change, not really a new or separate "re-codification" of the '54 Code. Yours, Famspear 19:25, 1 August 2006 (UTC)

Unsourced, unverified, non-neutral POV removed

I removed the following veribiage added by an anonymous user at IP 68.120.70.14:

Actually there is no written law that states a person has to file a tax form. Therefore, under the 16th Amendment, the IRS is frauding the American people. One should take a look at the 16th Amendment as it defines what "income" is and defines what party shall ablige by it by Congress.

The user want to consider studying the Wikipedia rules on Verifiability, Neutral Point of View, and No Original Research, in more depth.

The user may also want to consider reading the following articles in depth: Tax protester; Tax protester arguments; Tax protester constitutional arguments; Tax protester statutory arguments; Tax protester conspiracy arguments; and Tax protester history.

Ironically, the 16th Amendment itself does not define "income." The Internal Revenue Code does not define "income." The Code does define "gross income," "adjusted gross income," and "taxable income." See also Commissioner v. Glenshaw Glass Co.

Also, the user may wish to consider studying 26 U.S.C. § 1 (tax imposed on "taxable income" of individuals, estates and trusts), 26 U.S.C. § 61 ("gross income"), 26 U.S.C. § 63 ("taxable income"), 26 U.S.C. § 6012, 26 U.S.C. § 6151, 26 U.S.C. § 6651, 26 U.S.C. § 7201, 26 U.S.C. § 7203, and 26 U.S.C. § 7206 very carefully.

See also 26 U.S.C. § 6061, which states that, with specified, limited exceptions, "any return [ . . .] required to be made under any provision of the internal revenue laws or regulations shall be signed in accordance with forms or regulations prescribed by the Secretary" (emphasis added). The Treasury Regulations indicate that the individual's Federal income tax return must be filed on "Form 1040," "Form 1040A," etc. See 26 C.F.R. sec. 1.6012-1(a)(6). Yours, Famspear 21:46, 31 October 2006 (UTC)

Purchase of Title 26

I think it would be very wise if we could link to a location where someone could buy the entire printed version of Title 26. I've been doing web searches for the last 30 min, and I have come up with NOTHING. If anyone knows where you can order a printed version of the Title 26 code please post it on this article. I think it would be VERY applicable to know where you buy by the thing for yourself, and it would be a great addition to the article. (Hi Famspear!) ZandarKoad 03:11, 26 February 2007 (UTC)

Complete IRC is available from several tax publishers (including RIA & CCH). Search your favorite bookseller (e.g., Amazon, BN) for new and used copies. Search string is "internal revenue code" and generally returns the code in the top few items. Used copies may be out of date.Oldtaxguy (talk) 17:06, 9 March 2010 (UTC)

Title 26 distortions

Some user by the name of Famspear is changing the quote from the Government website to say things that it does not say. Now I know some one has something to hide and that gives me a hint that the Title 26 is indeed illegal and the IRS cannot collect income taxes base on that. Why would you change the citation to say something that it does not?--Ram2006 (talk) 17:36, 24 February 2008 (UTC)

Dear Ram2006: I changed the footnote to correct some coding and to list all the titles of the U.S. Code that have not been enacted into positive law. However, you are talking about something else. You are saying that title 26 is "illegal". That is incorrect, and that is not what the government web site says. So, why are you "hinting" that title 26 is "illegal"? Famspear (talk) 17:50, 24 February 2008 (UTC)

Oh, and as a follow up, your proposed language, while partially accurate, seems to leave a false impression -- the false impression that the Internal Revenue Code is not actually "the law," or is not actually "positive law". Instead of simply deleting your language, I changed it to list all the titles of the United States Code -- which is what you were referring to, after all -- to show all the titles that have not yet been enacted as positive law.

In short, the fact that various titles of the United States Code -- including the title 26 -- have not yet been enacted as "positive" law does not change the point that all titles of the Code are reprints of what IS positive law -- namely, the actual Acts of Congress as published in the United States Statutes at Large.

Unless you explain your edits more clearly, they are susceptible to being deleted as tax protester rhetoric. I have not deleted your edits yet, because I am assuming good faith on your part -- I am assuming that you are not simply pushing tax protester rhetoric into Wikipedia. However, if you start arguing that the tax law is not really the tax law, you may lose the presumption of good faith. Yours, Famspear (talk) 18:00, 24 February 2008 (UTC)

You know exactly why you rewrote the quote to obfuscate what the original quotation said. I know why you did it. We both understand what is going on, what is at stake and who are the stakeholders. There is no reason why you would be fighting so hard to insert changed citation, unless you really had something important in it for yourself. What you are proving is that there is indeed something very awry with this whole matter. --Ram2006 (talk) 21:57, 24 February 2008 (UTC)

Dear editors: Based on:

1. the statement by Ram2006 above: “Now I know some one has something to hide and that gives me a hint that the Title 26 is indeed illegal and the IRS cannot collect income taxes base on that”

2. the statements by Ram2006: “Stop messing with it. People will learn the truth one way or another. We are not stupid” in one of Ram2006’s edit summaries, and

3. the fact that all this is already covered in depth at Tax protester statutory arguments,

4. a lack of response from Ram2006,

I am reverting the edits by Ram2006. Further re-additions of this duplicative material are subject to being reverted on sight, per:

Talk:Tax protester/Request for comment

Yours, Famspear (talk) 20:38, 24 February 2008 (UTC)

• You need to familiarize yourself with the rules of writing wikipedia articles. One of which states that first paragraph must include a summary of important information. Secondly, your arguments are not addressing what is at issue here. And what is at issue is your rewriting of direct quote taken from the government website to look completely different from the original. I gave a direct quote with a link. There is nothing more to discuss. It is straightforward and clear. Any further reversals of this will fall under vandalism according to wikipedia rules. Your truth denial is just more proof that it affects your personally in some way, and you spend your time on wikipedia making sure certain information is hidden from the public. I think we both know what is going on. --Ram2006 (talk) 21:49, 24 February 2008 (UTC)

• • Ram2006, the statement that "some one has something to hide and that gives me a hint that the Title 26 is indeed illegal and the IRS cannot collect income taxes base on that" is crazy talk, and is exactly the sort of nonsense that we do not allow in Wikipedia articles, any more than we would entertain an argument that bigfoot shot JFK. Allow me to set your mind at ease about the status of the law, because the distinction you raise is meaningless. See United States Code: List of Positive Law Titles With Enacting Cites and Location to Revision Notes, Compiled by Richard J. McKinney, Assistant Law Librarian, Federal Reserve Board, Prepared for a November 9, 2004, program of the Legislative Research Special Interest Section of the Law Librarians' Society of Washington, D.C., Inc.; Last revised in October 2006:

Positive law titles of the United States Code, indicated by an asterisk, are legal evidence of the law and need no further authoritative citation as prior acts concerning those titles have been repealed. Other titles to the U.S. Code are "prima facie" evidence of the law (1 USC §204), and are presumed to be the law, but are rebuttable by production of prior unrepealed acts of Congress at variance with the Code. About half the titles of the Code have been revised, codified and enacted into positive law. The enacting terms used in this list under each positive law title are taken from the enacting clauses themselves. Historical and revision notes which explain derivations to each revised section, as well as editorial and non-substantive changes to them, are frequently set out after each section of a positive law title and are taken from committee reports (usually from the House Judiciary Committee) which accompany the legislation. The committee report number and where else it can be found is also set out.
...
Title 26 Internal Revenue Code; and Appendix.

Although Title 26 has not been enacted, the Internal Revenue Code has been (in 1939 and 1954) and is laid out exactly like Title 26. See act of Feb. 10, 1939, ch. 2, 53 Stat. 1; and act of Aug. 16, 1954, ch. 736, 68A Stat. 3. The Tax Reform Act of 1986, Pub. L. 99-514, §2, renamed the Code as the Internal Revenue Code of 1986, but did not make wholesale changes to it. There are no historical and revision notes and amendment notes only go back to 1954 as if it were a positive law title. The Appendix to title 26 consists of the rules and procedures of the U.S. Tax Court.

• • In other words, there is no conspiracy, no enforcement of "illegal law". What we have is a set of laws individually enacted by Congress, but (like most laws in this country) not enacted all at once as an entire title. That's fine, since there is no requirement in the U.S. Constitution (or in any statute) that says that only entire titles are enforceable as laws. As it turns out, Congress enacted the Internal Revenue Code, and then the book-keepers who arrange enacted laws into a searchable index added the title number (a common practice). But "Title 26" reflects exactly the law which a majority of the House of Representatives and a majority of the U.S. Senate voted in favor of, and which the President signed into law, both in 1939 and in 1954. bd2412 T 05:15, 25 February 2008 (UTC)

Request for comment at Talk:Tax protester statutory arguments

Dear editors: A user called “Ram2006” has begun inserting material in the article Internal Revenue Code to the effect that the “title 26” version of the Internal Revenue Code (as opposed to the 1954/1986 Internal Revenue Code as amended) is non-positive law. While it is of course technically correct to say that “title 26” itself is “non-positive law,” the effect of the edit appears to me to be the beginnings of another tax protester rant about the Internal Revenue Code itself not being “the law” or not being “positive law” which of course (in the minds of tax protesters) leads to “there’s no law that makes me liable for income tax.” The positive law/non-positive law tax protester argument is already covered at length in Tax protester statutory arguments. I have reverted Ram2006’s material in Internal Revenue Code a couple of times, but he or she has responded with personal attacks, and insists on re-inserting his/her material.

I have now inserted some verbiage in Tax protester statutory arguments that explicitly states what Ram2006 is stating: that “title 26” is indeed “non-positive law” (a true statement, but it doesn’t mean what the tax protesters think it means, of course). I have added this new verbiage right before the verbiage that explains that the “Internal Revenue Code” itself (not the version published as “title 26,” but the actual 1954/1986 Code, as amended, as scattered throughout the many, many volumes of the United States Statutes at Large published since 1954 is “positive law,” and is of course “the law” enacted by actual Acts of Congress.

I have pointed out to Ram2006 that this topic is already covered at Tax protester statutory arguments, to no avail.

I would like to ask fellow editors for clarification on the following points.

1. Are Ram2006’s edits considered to be insertion of tax protester rhetoric for purposes of Talk:Tax protester/Request for comment?

2. If yes, then under the consensus that such edits be “reverted on sight” per Talk:Tax protester/Request for comment, at what point -- if any – could his/her repeated attempts to re-insert the edits be considered vandalism, such that his edits can be disposed of without regard to the three-revert rule? In other words, to what extent, if any, does the three-revert rule apply (or not apply) here?

At any rate, I think that if Ram2006’s edits are allowed to stand, then we are going to have to add balance to Internal Revenue Code article by copying much of the same material shown at Tax protester statutory arguments – defeating the purpose for which the tax protester related articles were created. I would argue that all the material on title 26 as “non-positive law” should go with the related material at Tax protester statutory arguments and not at Internal Revenue Code.

Thoughts? Please respond at Talk:Tax protester statutory arguments. Yours, Famspear (talk) 02:03, 25 February 2008 (UTC)

Dead Links

New to the wiki thing so I don't want to mess it up, however there are some links going to Cornell such as Chapter 1, 2, 3 ect, and they are dead. Condor85 (talk) 02:10, 21 September 2008 (UTC)

I added a temporary fix. Formatting needs to be cleaned up, but I'm not sure how that's done. Famspear (talk) 13:43, 21 September 2008 (UTC)

How long is it?????

Someone please research this, I'm very curious about it and don't know where I'd find the info. For instance how many words, how many pages, how much might it actually weigh, etc. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 74.64.108.61 (talk) 01:38, 31 May 2012 (UTC)

• The law is not a physical piece of paper, so it has no page length, mass or weight. You could print it at any font size or paper density, and change your results.—GoldRingChip 11:46, 31 May 2012 (UTC)
• As for the number of words, you can do the research yourself by going to http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/26, and start counting. Be bold! —GoldRingChip 11:46, 31 May 2012 (UTC)

I have a hard copy published by CCH late in 2011. It includes legislative history, including text of the law before changes, since 1954. The history is about half the total 4,950 pages. USC Title 26 as well as each chapter is available for download; the complete code is 16MG downloaded as a .txt file, which also includes legislative history since 1954, as well as a handy (?!) two way cross reference table between the current law and the 1939 law. Word count tells me it's 2.4 million words, including legislative history. Keep in mind that Title 19, Customs Duties, is also tax law. Oldtaxguy (talk) 03:58, 5 June 2012 (UTC)

Also, there is federal tax law scattered in around in other titles of the United States Code, such as the Bankruptcy Code. And there is federal tax law in uncodified statutes, found in the United States Statutes at Large.

As Oldtaxguy mentioned, the hard copy (desk book copy) version published by CCH includes most of the changes since 1954. In other words, the CCH copy is helpful in reconstructing the precise wording of each section, subsection, paragraph, subparagraph, clause and subclause of the tax law as it applies to a given tax year or taxable event on a given date, without having to look at multiple volumes of official bound statute books, etc. Oops, I don't want to sound like a "commercial" for CCH, but the aforementioned hard copy desk book is indeed one tool in my law library. Famspear (talk) 04:16, 5 June 2012 (UTC)

Criticism and controversy

I think this article is seriously missing a "Criticism and Controversy" section. Many people criticize the tax code for being too complex and having too many loopholes (it has over 9,000 sections!). Even Mitt Romney called for Congress to "simplify the code." Can we discuss this? 68.173.113.106 (talk) 22:55, 7 November 2012 (UTC)

Yes, I think I might be able to locate some previously published third party sources on critiques of the Internal Revenue Code. I saw an article the other day that I think had some of this. I will see if I can dig it up. Famspear (talk) 23:12, 7 November 2012 (UTC)

Great. Top 10 reasons to scrap the code. 68.173.113.106 (talk) 02:55, 8 November 2012 (UTC)

Effect of Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of 2017

Reference to the new tax law should be incorporated. Further, I'm unsure just how/when the reference to the year of the code becomes revised? Maybe one of the public's astute tax attorney or CPA's can advise. Specifically, since 1986, the IRC is referred to formally as the "Internal Revenue Code of 1986, as amended." Does TCJA make this now the Internal Revenue Code of 2017, as amended? Perhaps not... Sorry I didn't log in, been too long since I have and forgot my account info.

2605:A601:460:2300:BC3B:949D:2D0C:377D (talk) 03:35, 31 December 2017 (UTC)Chris

No, the only change to the name of the Internal Revenue Code of 1954 was the change from "1954" to "1986."

Actually, the unofficial name of this law is "Tax Cuts and Jobs Act". There is no "of 2017" in the title, and there never was, even in the draft versions.

In fact, the official ("short title") name of the law isn't even "Tax Cuts and Jobs Act." At almost the last minute, that name was stripped out of the bill (to comply with something called the Byrd Rule) before the Senate approved it and sent it back to the House of Representatives. The name "Tax Cuts and Jobs Act" appears in the law about nine times, but the law has no official short title. Famspear (talk) 04:38, 31 December 2017 (UTC)

PS: It would probably be needlessly duplicative to go into the changes here in the article on the Internal Revenue Code. Contrary to what the mass media and the politicians have been saying, this is not anywhere close to a re-write of the Internal Revenue Code (aside from the fact that there have been literally hundreds of these laws passed amending the Code since 1954). The actual physical text of the enrolled bill as signed by the President is 185 pages, single spaced. By contrast, the entire Internal Revenue Code with all its amendments since August 16, 1954 is well over 5,000 pages, single spaced. The vast majority of Code provisions weren't changed at all by this law. Famspear (talk) 04:43, 31 December 2017 (UTC)

Thanks Famspear, makes sense, agree this was hardly an overhaul, more so a handful of simplification measures and rate cuts. I've advised many people so far that, no, chicken little, the sky has not fallen and when I've shown them their new estimated 2018 numbers, they're like "Oh, well that is some good news". A few, myself included have slight increases. In my view, a present for some, a lump of coal for others in this year's tax stocking. Anyway, with the passing of this tax act, I do suggest the simplest of tweak in light of the amendments and reference to the separate article on the enacted law. Chris. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2605:A601:460:2300:7C16:DC1A:EACA:4BF8 (talk) 09:41, 1 January 2018 (UTC)

Provisions not administered by the IRS

The introduction states, "Its implementing agency is the Internal Revenue Service." This is true for the vast majority of the IRC and especially the parts most frequently discussed by the public and practitioners. However, some parts are not administered by the IRS and the certain regulations promulgated under the IRC are not issued by the IRS. I'm thinking mostly of those issued by the Alcohol and Tobacco Tax and Trade Bureau (TTB) and before that, by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF). TTB administers most, if not all, of the Subtitle E provisions and some of the Subtitle D provisions, basically those excise taxes on alcohol, tobacco, and firearms. Should there be a separate section within the article on these topics?700jn (talk) 03:49, 22 July 2020 (UTC)User:700jn

@ 2401:D800:76FB:D3F1:B435:CEFF:FEC8:5F03 (talk) 12:32, 15 November 2023 (UTC)