The House Ways & Means Committee is holding a hearing on corporate tax avoidance across international borders and into low-tax jurisdictions and the pros & cons of changing to a "territorial" tax system. This is a similar topic to the Senate hearing last month, at which the CEO of Apple testified.

Live video of the hearing is available, and an archived copy of the video will be available at the same website. (Update: archived video in .MP4 format available)

Testimony:

• Mr. Pascal Saint-Amans, Director, Centre for Tax Policy and Administration, Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD)
• Mr. Edward Kleinbard, Professor of Law, University of Southern California Gould School of Law
• Mr. Paul Oosterhuis, Partner, Skadden Arps Slate Meager & Flom LLP

The Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations is holding a hearing today on Apple, Inc.'s use of complex structures of foreign subsidiaries to minimize or avoid U.S. income taxes (e.g., "Dutch-Irish sandwiches") and subsidiaries that have no country of residence. 

The following documents are currently available: 

• Subcomittee memoradum by Sens. Carl Levin (D-MI) and John McCain (R-AZ)
• Exhibits

Video of the hearing is available from the Subcomittee's website.

Witness List:

Panel #1:

• J. Richard Harvey (Villanova) Testimony
• Stephen E. Shay (Harvard) Testimony

Panel #2: 

• Timothy D. Cook (Chief Executive Officer, Apple) Testimony
• Peter Oppenheimer (Senior Vice President & Chief Financial Officer, Apple) Testimony
• Phillip A. Bullock (Head of Tax Operations, Apple) Testimony

Panel #3: 

• Mark J. Mazur (Assistant Secretary for Tax Policy, U.S. Treasury Department) Testimony
• Samuel M. Maruca (Director, Transfer Pricing Operations, Large Business & International (LB&I) Division, IRS) Testimony

In November, we posted about the IRS's digital release of 10 years' worth of tax-exempt organization returns, which contained more than 6.5 million documents.

ProPublica, a news organization that "produces investigative journalism in the public interest," has now launched an easy-to-use search engine for these returns. You can search by keyword, state, non-profit category, and organization type (e.g., 501(c)(3), 501(c)(4))

For example, if you're interested in the current IRS controversy, searching on "Tea Party", "constitution", or "patriot" will pull up information on numerious 501(c)(4) orgainizations and links to pdf scans of their Form 990 returns.

The Tax Analysts database (http://0-services.taxanalysts.com.gull.georgetown.edu/Login) provides electronic access to back issues of their publications. (Please be sure to use the proxy link from the library rather than go to the website directly --- even when on campus.)

To access the back issues, you can “browse archives by date” or do an advanced search. Be sure when doing an advanced search to change the date range from the default (2008) to the years you are interested in.

Tax Analysts enables searching on the entire publication run of their newsletters from the first issue.

“Browse archives by date” lets you read full issues of:

• Tax Notes: 2001 -

• Tax Notes Today: 2012 -

• Tax Notes International: 2001 -

• Worldwide Tax Daily: 2012 -

• State Tax Notes: 2000 -

• State Tax Today: 2012 -

The Library also has a nearly complete collection of the back issues of Tax Notes (starting from volume 4) and full runs of the back issues of Tax Notes International and State Tax Notes in print.

The Supreme Court has posted audio and transcripts of today's hearing in United States v. Windsor (The Defense of Marriage Act case)

Preparing your own taxes? Several resources in the Bloomberg Law Tax Practice Center that may be of particular interest for your own return preparation are "BNA Bloomberg Fast Answers: Federal Tax" and the "Tax Practice Series." Fast Answers provides quick, brief, explanations of common tax issues, and the Tax Practice Series provides additional detail in an easy-to-use format.

If you get audited, Bloomberg Law also has the "IRS Practice Adviser" with helpful instructions on the audit and appeals process, calculating interest and penalties, and collection.  

All three resources are in the "BNA Portfolios and Analysis" section of the Tax Practice Center.  

Although some of these same materials are available in the Bloomberg BNA Library database, the interface is significantly easier to use on Bloomberg Law.  

Students and faculty interested in requesting an account on Bloomberg Law may obtain one by following the instructions available in the Library's catalog.

On Tuesday, February 12 at 5 pm in the Williams Library CLC, Ben Snipes of Bloomberg Law will demonstrate the Bloomberg Law Tax Practice Center. This new feature of Bloomberg Law provides ready access to primary tax legal materials, Tax Court decisions and dockets, transactional forms and agreements, and secondary legal materials including the BNA Tax Management Portfolios and Practicing Law Institute treatises.

All interested students and faculty are invited to attend. If you have any questions, please contact Jason Zarin. Students and faculty interested in requesting an account on Bloomberg Law may obtain one by following the instructions available in the Library's catalog.

Today, February 3, marks the 100th anniversary of the ratification of the 16th Amendment, which gave Congress the power to create an income tax. Shortly thereafter, Congress enacted the Income Tax Law of 1913, 38 Stat. 114 (Oct. 3, 1913) -- the first of many! (The income tax provisions start on page 166)

The 1913 Form 1040 return was the picture of simplicity and was only 4 pages, including instructions. An annual exemption of $3,000 (the equivalent of $70,000 today!) enabled most Americans to escape the 1%--6% tax.

The legislative history of the Income Tax Law of 1913 is available in Seidman's legislative history of federal income tax laws, 1938-1861, which the Library has in its print collection. An extensive collection of pre-compiled legislative histories of federal tax laws is available on Hein Online in the "Taxation & Economic Reform in America Parts I & II, 1781--2012" library.

Photo: IRS 1040 Tax Form Being Filled Out by kenteegardin CC by SA 2.0

Bloomberg Law has added Taxation to its Practice Center interface. The Tax Practice Center provides ready access to

• Primary statutory and regulatory tax materials, including the Internal Revenue Code, Treasury Regulations, and IRS administrative guidance
• Tax case decisions and dockets, including the United States Tax Court
• BNA Tax Management Portfolios
• Practicing Law Institute treatises
• Selected tax journals
• M&A and related transactional forms and agreements

Students and faculty interested in requesting an account on Bloomberg Law may obtain one by following the instructions available in the Library's catalog.

A new "Big Data" resource of tax material has recently been made available. On October 30, Public.Resource.Org made available 10 years' worth -- nearly 6.5 million -- Exempt Organization Form 990 returns filed by exempt organizations and private foundations as well as unrelated business income (UBIT) returns filed by these organizations. The data set contains returns from January 2002 through September 2012, and will be updated monthly.

At this time, these returns are only available in pdf format, but Public.Resource.Org plan to extract the underlying data from these returns to make them more amenable for data analysis.

These records and more information about the data set are available at https://bulk.resource.org/irs.gov/eo/readme.html.