Part VII · Reference · No. 02

The primary sources

A catalogue of the statutes, regulations, agency publications, and judicial decisions on which this site rests. Where a stable official URL exists, it appears; secondary repositories are noted but never substituted for the original text.

This page lists primary materials. A primary source — for these purposes — is the text whose words are the law: the statute as enacted, the regulation as promulgated, the agency notice as published, the decision as issued by the deciding tribunal. Treatises, practitioner guides, and news accounts are not primary, and they do not appear here.

The listing is selective. It catalogues the materials most often cited across this reference, organized by jurisdiction and type. For any given entry on the site, the citation block at the foot of the page is the operative list of sources for that topic; this page is a master directory.

United States — federal statutes

The Internal Revenue Code

Title 26 of the United States Code. The consolidated statute reorganized by the Internal Revenue Code of 1986 and amended annually. Recurring sections cited across this site:

• §§1(h)(4), 1222 — capital-gains rates, including the 28% rate on long-term gain from collectibles.
• §§61, 1001, 1012, 1014, 1015 — gross income, realization, basis, step-up at death, transferred basis.
• §§162, 183, 212, 274, 280F — ordinary and necessary expenses, hobby-loss limits, expenses for production of income, entertainment and listed-property substantiation.
• §§167, 168, 179 — depreciation and expensing.
• §408(m) — definition of collectibles.
• §469 — passive-activity-loss limitations.
• §§1031, 1033, 453 — like-kind exchanges, involuntary conversions, installment sales.
• §1411 — net investment income tax.
• §§170, 642(c) — charitable contribution deductions for individuals and trusts.
• Chapter 11 (§§2001–2210) — estate tax.
• Chapter 12 (§§2501–2524) — gift tax.
• Chapter 13 (§§2601–2664) — generation-skipping transfer tax.
• §§6166, 6161 — deferral of estate-tax payment.
• §§671–679 — grantor-trust rules.
• §§1471–1474 — FATCA, chapter 4 withholding and reporting.
• §6050I — cash-transaction reporting.
• §6038D — specified foreign financial-asset reporting (Form 8938).
• §§1400Z-1, 1400Z-2 — opportunity zones.
• §7874 — anti-inversion rules.

Authoritative text: law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/26. The IRS reproduces the Code at irs.gov.

The Bank Secrecy Act and AML statutes

• 31 U.S.C. §§5311–5336 — Bank Secrecy Act, including FBAR authority at §5314 and beneficial-ownership reporting at §5336 (Corporate Transparency Act).
• 26 U.S.C. §6050I and 31 U.S.C. §5331 — parallel cash-transaction reporting for trades or businesses and for non-financial trades or businesses.

Customs and trade

• 19 U.S.C. §§1401a, 1481, 1484 — customs valuation, invoice, entry.
• Harmonized Tariff Schedule of the United States, hts.usitc.gov.

United States — Treasury regulations and IRS guidance

The Treasury Regulations appear at Title 26 of the Code of Federal Regulations. Subregulatory guidance is issued in several formats, ranked here by weight:

1. Treasury Regulations — promulgated through notice-and-comment, with the force of law within their delegated scope.
2. Revenue Rulings — published IRS positions applying the Code to specific factual situations; binding on the IRS, persuasive in court.
3. Revenue Procedures — published IRS procedural positions.
4. Notices and Announcements — interim guidance, often pending regulations.
5. Private Letter Rulings, Technical Advice Memoranda, Chief Counsel Advice — taxpayer-specific or internal; cannot be cited as precedent under §6110(k)(3), but read closely by practitioners.

Index: irs.gov; Internal Revenue Bulletin: irs.gov/irb.

Recurring IRS publications and forms

• Form 706 — United States Estate (and Generation-Skipping Transfer) Tax Return.
• Form 709 — United States Gift (and Generation-Skipping Transfer) Tax Return.
• Form 8283 — Noncash Charitable Contributions.
• Form 8300 — Report of Cash Payments Over $10,000 Received in a Trade or Business.
• Form 8938 — Statement of Specified Foreign Financial Assets.
• FinCEN Form 114 — Report of Foreign Bank and Financial Accounts (FBAR).
• Publication 561 — Determining the Value of Donated Property.
• Publication 526 — Charitable Contributions.
• Publication 463 — Travel, Gift, and Car Expenses (includes listed-property substantiation).

United States — judicial decisions

U.S. Tax Court

The principal forum for pre-payment income, estate, and gift tax disputes. Opinions appear as Tax Court of the United States Reports (T.C.) for regular opinions and as Memorandum opinions (T.C. Memo.). Searchable opinions: ustaxcourt.gov.

Recurring decisions in luxury-asset practice include those addressing yacht and aircraft hobby-loss and material-participation issues, charitable-deduction valuation, fractional-interest discounts on art, and pilot- and crew-related deductions. Listings of selected decisions appear within the individual entries on this site, including notable art tax cases and aircraft personal-use audits.

U.S. Courts of Appeals and the Supreme Court

Appellate review proceeds from the Tax Court to the appropriate regional circuit. Estate-tax decisions of broad significance — including those on family-limited-partnership valuation discounts and on charitable-remainder valuation — have come principally from the Eighth, Ninth, and Federal Circuits. The Supreme Court rarely takes pure tax cases; when it does, the holdings are foundational (Commissioner v. Glenshaw Glass, Welch v. Helvering, Frank Lyon Co. v. United States).

U.S. District Courts and the Court of Federal Claims

Refund actions are tried in either the district court for the taxpayer's residence (with jury) or in the Court of Federal Claims (bench). Customs valuation and import-tariff disputes appear in the Court of International Trade.

United States — state authorities

State revenue codes vary widely. Where this site discusses a state regime — Delaware's franchise tax treatment of holding LLCs, Montana's absence of sales tax on motor-vehicle and aircraft transfers, Florida's homestead and limited domicile claim — the underlying source is the codified state statute and the published guidance of the state department of revenue. State-by-state catalogues appear within the jurisdiction pages: Delaware, Montana, South Dakota, Nevada, Florida.

International — treaty and model instruments

• OECD Model Tax Convention on Income and on Capital, with Commentary — oecd.org/tax/treaties.
• OECD Common Reporting Standard for automatic exchange of financial-account information — oecd.org/tax/automatic-exchange.
• OECD/G20 Base Erosion and Profit Shifting (BEPS) Project deliverables.
• OECD Pillar Two model rules (global minimum tax) — relevant principally for multinational enterprise groups, marginally for some family-office entity arrangements.
• UN Model Double Taxation Convention.
• WTO Agreement on Implementation of Article VII of the GATT (Customs Valuation Agreement).
• UNESCO 1970 Convention on the Means of Prohibiting and Preventing the Illicit Import, Export and Transfer of Ownership of Cultural Property.

Foreign primary materials

Each jurisdiction page identifies its principal statute and the agency responsible for administration. Recurring foreign sources:

• United Kingdom — Taxation of Chargeable Gains Act 1992, Inheritance Tax Act 1984, Value Added Tax Act 1994; HMRC manuals at gov.uk.
• Italy — Testo Unico delle Imposte sui Redditi (TUIR), DPR 633/1972 (VAT), the codice civile (succession), and the special regimes including the new-resident flat tax (Article 24-bis TUIR).
• Switzerland — Federal Direct Tax Act (DBG/LIFD), federal stamp-duty law, and the cantonal tax laws governing wealth tax and lump-sum taxation.
• Luxembourg — Loi modifiée du 4 décembre 1967 concernant l'impôt sur le revenu (LIR); SOPARFI and SPF regimes under separate enactments.
• Singapore — Income Tax Act 1947 and Goods and Services Tax Act 1993; Inland Revenue Authority of Singapore (IRAS) at iras.gov.sg.
• Cayman Islands — Companies Act, Exempted Limited Partnership Act, Trusts Act; Cayman Islands Maritime Authority for vessel registration.
• Marshall Islands — Maritime Act 1990; International Registries, Inc. as administrator.
• Isle of Man — Income Tax Act 1970; Aircraft Registry under the Civil Aviation Administration.
• United Arab Emirates — Federal Decree-Law No. 47 of 2022 (corporate tax); Federal Tax Authority at tax.gov.ae.

How citations appear on this site

Within an entry, statutes are cited in short form (§408(m), §1031) on first and subsequent mention, with the title of the section identified once. Cases are cited the first time in full with the reporter citation and italics for the case name; thereafter by short name. Regulations are cited as Treas. Reg. §1.x-y. IRS guidance is cited by document number (Rev. Rul. YYYY-NN; Notice YYYY-NN). Foreign statutes are cited with the official short title and article number.

Where a primary-source URL is known to be stable, it appears as an inline link. Where a URL is uncertain, the citation appears in text form and the reader is left to consult the primary repository (IRS.gov, the official reporter, the relevant foreign authority's site).

Reviewed May 2026