Hidden in Plain Sight: IRS Publications and a New Path to Tax Reform

Internal Revenue Service (IRS) publications are everywhere in tax practice and almost nowhere in tax scholarship. These publications seek to explain substantive tax law to the general public in a simple, comprehensible, and accurate manner. IRS publications are not only the primary source of information about tax law for taxpayers who file their own returns, but such publications are also essential for online tax preparation platforms, like TurboTax, and for third-party tax return preparers, who rely on this information when selling their services to millions of taxpayers each year. From the perspective of these stakeholders, IRS publications are not simply explanations of substantive tax law; they are substantive tax law. Yet IRS publications are scarcely mentioned in legal scholarship or tax policy debates. Considering their influence and ubiquity in tax practice, the broad inattention of scholars and policymakers to IRS publications is enormously surprising.