The Bulletin Index-Digest System & Highlights Summaries

Alphabetical List of Tax Topics

(Summaries back to 1953, with links to all actual documents from January 1996)

This section is a combination of the Internal Revenue Bulletin Index-Digest System, and the Summaries of the "Highlights" pages (or covers) of the Internal Revenue Bulletins. The Internal Revenue Bulletin (referred to as the "IRB" in tax lingo ) is the authoritative instrument of the IRS Commissioner for announcing official rulings and procedures of the Internal Revenue Service.

Published weekly, the Bulletin includes the full text of all official documents that have been released by the IRS during that week. These documents carry such titles as Notices, Treasury Decisions, Revenue Rulings, Revenue Procedures, Announcements, Regulations, etc.

The "Highlights" page briefly summarizes the contents of each document included in that Bulletin. We have taken the summaries from the Highlights page of all Bulletins since 1953 and arranged them alphabetically by tax topics. You can search here by the tax topic you need information for, rather than by the type of official document, as you would in the IRS Bulletins section.

The Summaries of Tax Topics from 1953 - 1993 come from the Bulletin Index-Digest System which was formerly compiled by the IRS, but which has now been discontinued. The Bulletin Index-Digest System provided a easier method for researching matters published in the weekly Bulletin. The Index-Digest included summaries (they were called "digests") extracted from the Bulletins, but those summaries were arranged by tax topic. The summaries also included extra information about the current status of the relevant IRS documents.

We obtained the last issue of the Index-Digest System published by the IRS, and have included here all Summaries (or digests) of Tax Topics from that last printing, which covers the period from January 1953 through December 1993.

The Summaries of Tax Topics for the years 1953 through 1993 are in the Adobe Acrobat PDF format, and you will need the appropriate Acrobat PDF Reader to either view, or print them.

Beginning with January 1994, the Summaries of Tax Topics here are taken directly from the "Highlights" page of each Bulletin, and are in the HTML format. Click here to view the "Highlights" summaries of all IRS Bulletins going back to 1989.

In addition, we also have the full text of all official IRS documents released in the weekly Bulletins since January 1996 as separate PDF files. Each summary on an HTML page has a link to the full text of the document being summarized. (Those documents can also be viewed in the IRS Bulletins section.) There is no charge for viewing, printing, or downloading any of these documents.

Note that not all tax topics have both PDF and HTML summaries if NO documents pertaining to that topic were issued during that time frame.

IMPORTANT: The Index-Digest summaries and the Bulletin summaries are intended only as aids to the reader in identifying the subject matter covered. They may NOT be relied upon as authoritative interpretations, and may NOT be current. See the full text of any current IRS document.

Click here to find out how to use the Bulletin Index-Digest System by tax topic.

Alphabetical List of Tax Topics

Directly below you will see an alphabetical chart of "A" through "Z". To search your tax topic, you simply click on the letter of the alphabet that corresponds with the first letter of the word you wish to search. (For example, to search the word "casualty," you would click the "C".) You will then go to the list of tax topics that begin with that letter. The complete list will give you all the tax topics under which the summaries, or digests, are arranged. You will save time by checking this list to see whether the term you have chosen is listed there and whether it is cross-referenced to another heading.

To find the topical category you need, scroll down through the blue text listings which are in alphabetical order. Click on the file name to the left of the topic to read the main page for that category.

If no file is listed next to the topic category, there will be a reference to "See" the other category that is referenced in the parenthesis.

Some categories have subcategories which are shown in black. When subcategories are actually part of another major category there will be a reference to "See" the other category.

SEARCH:

You can either: Search all IRS Bulletin Documents issued since January 1996, or Search the entire site. For a more focused search, put your search word(s) in quotes.

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