Today's issue of TL NewsWire covers a federal tax law research tool that facilitates point-in-time analysis and redlines showing changes (see article below). In addition, you'll find links to the previous 11 TL NewsWire features, including our coverage of a legal research service that now provides insights on the judges overseeing your cases in certain federal practice areas, practice management and legal accounting software that can download bank and credit card transactions for faster reconciliations, and much more. Don't miss the next issue.
Tax lawyers are historians. Specifically, they often must identify differences over time by comparing versions of the Internal Revenue Code (Tax Code) and related materials. Surprisingly, most do this by looking back and forth at two versions of these materials, which can lead to mistakes in interpretation.
Standard Fed Plus … in One Sentence
Launched recently, Wolters Kluwer Legal & Regulatory, U.S.' Standard Fed Plus is a new online practice tool based on the Standard Federal Tax Reporter that enables you to compare versions of the tax laws and commentary at different points in time with redlines of the changes.
The Killer Feature
Given that lawyers usually redline their own documents, why not the law too? This clever idea led tax-lawyer-turned-product-director Benjamin Snipes to develop Standard Fed Plus accessed within Cheetah, Wolters Kluwer's new legal research platform.
When you navigate to a section of the Standard Federal Tax Reporter in Cheetah, Standard Fed Plus displays a timeline across the top of the page listing every date on which that section changed. This facilitates a Point-in-Time Analysis — click a date to read that version, click another date, etc. If you need more context during your research, you'll find links to the corresponding legislative history and Standard Federal Tax Reporter commentary. You can also find tax-related case law. Standard Fed Plus can save you about 15 minutes per search according to Snipes.
Given the volume of changes that can occur in the Tax Code, the Redlining Comparison Tool in Standard Fed Plus enables you to compare two versions of a section with additions in green and deletions in red similar to Track Changes in Microsoft Word. In fact, you can copy and paste this redline intact into a Microsoft Word or WordPerfect document such as in a research memo or opinion letter you're drafting. The algorithm Snipes and his team created further reduces "immaterial noise" from the redline.
"Standard Fed Plus is part of our ongoing effort to introduce new, user-friendly and authoritative solutions to frequent challenges faced by tax attorneys and other tax professionals, and integrate accurate content into their workflow," said Dean Sonderegger, Vice President & General Manager, Legal Markets & Innovation. "Even looking beyond the game-changing Point-in-Time Navigation and Redlining Comparison features, Standard Fed Plus combines authoritative content, expert analysis, practice tools, and a current awareness for legal professionals seeking to gain insights on today's most challenging tax matters."
Other Notable Features
In addition to its federal tax offerings, Cheetah contains primary and secondary tax materials from the CCH and Aspen imprints across many other practice areas ranging from antitrust to employee benefits to securities and more. Iconic titles such as Mergers, Acquisitions, and Buyouts by Ginsburg, Levin and Rocap are exclusive.
Cheetah sports a new, responsive design that adjusts to any size screen from a large monitor to an iPhone. Features such as auto-fill and auto-suggest speed up your searches. Related Content and Metadata links enable you to dig deeper without having to run a separate search. You can use the ever-present Copy Link tool to send a colleague to a case, Tax Code section, etc.
What Else Should You Know?
Standard Fed Plus currently encompasses versions the tax laws from 1986 to today, including CCH's commentary and legislative history, and will soon extend this history back to 1917. Learn more about Standard Fed Plus.
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