Free Tax Research Sites Fill Gap For Some Professionals

From the Jan. 2009 Review
of Tax Research Systems

[Ed. Note: This article appeared along with the review section.]

Technology, the Internet in particular, has proven to be a wonderfully torturous
phenomenon. On the one side, technology has enabled virtually all of our society
to be much more productive, performing much more work in the same amount of
time. It’s also given us the ability to instantly access a wealth of content,
knowledge and tools larger than humans have ever been able to. Some have even
been freed from office environments, working remotely or from home.

For many, these benefits have also come at the cost of increased workload,
while the ever-present connectivity has caused an unprecedented battle between
work-life balance. Wi-Fi Internet access, G3-enabled smart phones, laptop computers
and various other gadgets keep us seconds away from work, whether we’re
in the office, our car, our home or even on vacation.

Another challenge posed by giving us access to virtually all of the libraries,
documents and information in the world is wading through these mountains of
knowledge to find what we actually need. Once again, everything is out there
and can generally be found for free, especially government-produced materials.
But you can also find pretty proprietary information such as research and analysis,
greatly in part due to unauthorized copying and posting to various websites
where their credibility may be questionable.

For taxation issues, it is imperative to not only be able to quickly locate
relevant information, but to also have the utmost confidence in its reliability.
And this is where much of the value lies in subscription-based tax research
programs designed for accountants. Many of these systems, including all those
reviewed in this issue, also include a variety of practice tools and other features
designed to help professionals work more efficiently, but the core offering
is the content. This includes both primary source information and secondary
materials such as guidance and analysis, which can be invaluable when preparing
more complex returns with diverse treatment options, especially in areas of
changing law.

For many practitioners with smaller or less complex client bases, however,
there are less comprehensive options that provide the essentials, such as core
tax law, treasury regulations and other government offerings. The availability
of this information has even led to free tax research websites managed by reputable
organizations. These sites cannot offer the same breadth as the paid subscription
systems, especially in terms of analysis and commentary, but they do offer a
valuable service to professionals who need specific information from these sources.
Here’s an introduction to a few of them.

TAXALMANAC.ORG
Run by Intuit, TaxAlmanac.org is specifically designed for tax professionals
and is actually managed by the practicing professionals who use the site. It
is set up similarly to Wikipedia,
allowing practitioners to access primary source documents and also interact
with each other. The result is an online community of tax and accounting professionals
that can share their collective knowledge with each other, helping each to determine
appropriate tax treatments and solve other issues.

ACCOUNTANTSWORLD.COM
AccountantsWorld offers an array of mostly web-based programs for professional
accounting firms, but also provides free tax and accounting content on its website,
including news, tips, articles, listings of government entity websites and other
tools. It also hosts several professional discussion forums that enable practitioners
to interact and help each other.

1040.COM
The 1040.com website, managed by Drake Software, serves two purposes. First,
it is a general tax information and news website primarily geared toward lay
taxpayers, but its content, tools and calculators can also be of value to professionals.
Drake also uses its 1040.com domain as the hub for its professional websites,
which are provided free to firms using their professional compliance suite.

Technology