Accounting and Auditing Research, 11th Edition

8Tax Research for Compliance and Tax Planning

LEARNING OBJECTIVES

After completing this chapter, you should understand:

• Tax planning concepts and tax research goals and challenges.
• Tax research databases, such as Checkpoint.
• Primary tax authorities, particularly the Code, treasury regulations, and court cases.
• The tax research process.
• AI’s developing role in tax research.
• Professional standards and technological changes affecting tax work.

Many taxpayers acquire professional assistance in completing their tax returns. Increased complexity in tax law and its application make strong tax research skills now more important than ever. The purpose of this chapter is to present information and guidance in conducting tax research for both tax compliance and tax planning purposes. Tax research methodology has many similarities to accounting and auditing research.

Tax Planning, Goals, Challenges, and Databases

Tax planning analyzes a proposed transaction from a tax perspective. Fundamentally, successful tax planning requires effective tax management that includes knowing your goals and values, maintaining good records for tax and business purposes, understanding the tax implications for wise financial decisions, and obtaining professional help when needed to make better decisions. Tax planning often becomes more complicated after new tax legislation is created.

Tax planning engagements are sometimes referred to as open-fact engagements because not all of the relevant facts ...