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Comprehensive Tax Law Resources and Expert Guidance
December 6, 2019
Today's TechnoLawyer Buyer's Guide report covers a tax law research platform with primary and secondary sources on more than 1,000 topics, each curated by a leading tax law expert.
Tax Essentials Offers Comprehensive Tax Law Resources and Expert Guidance for More Than 1,000 Key Tax Topics
Unlike other areas of law, tax law is inextricably linked to virtually all transactions from a simple online purchase to a complex cross-border investment. Add to this the continuous regulatory changes and it's no wonder that tax lawyers field so many client questions that require research. Ideally, a single research service would contain everything you need from expert guidance to primary sources — and that's now the case.
Tax Essentials in One Sentence
Tax Essentials from Wolters Kluwer is a new research service featuring leading experts who create and curate federal, state, and international tax law resources on more than 1,000 tax topics.
The Killer Feature
Wolters Kluwer has recruited many leading tax practitioners to share their insights on Tax Essentials. These experts provide advice and commentary on important tax issues with comprehensive citations to additional references. They also create and curate practical resources such as Decision Tools, Smart Charts, and Client Letters to save you time.
Decision Tools give you quick answers to common "What If" questions such as determining if a client can deduct the business use of home expenses for a variety of different scenarios.
Smart Charts enable you to analyze a tax law issue, including instant comparisons. For example, the Smart Chart for Estate Planning Rates, Exclusions, and Inflation Adjustments can compare the rates and years of your choosing.
Client Letters include an accompanying overview as well as inline guidance such as when to include or exclude specific paragraphs. You can download these letters in Word format for instant use in your practice.
Tax Essentials features leading tax experts on more than 1,000 topics.
Other Notable Features
Tax Essentials resides on Wolters Kluwer's Cheetah research platform. Each major tax category in Cheetah features a dashboard with links to primary and secondary references, related news, and Tax Essentials. Click on Tax Essentials to find a topic of interest. You can also search Tax Essentials and use filters and searches within your search to narrow the results.
In addition to the materials maintained by the experts, Tax Essentials also features the deepest collection of primary sources according to Senior Product Manager Anand Daga. "By adding state and international topics to Tax Essentials, we created the only solution for legal professionals that provides content, tools, and the ability to quickly review state, federal, or international topics on a single platform," says Daga. "Users are never more than two clicks away from what they need."
For state tax topics, you'll find guidance for all 50 states collected under the Treatment by State tab. Tax Essentials also covers 90 countries, each of which includes a snapshot with key data such as the governing authority, fiscal year, income tax brackets, and more to get you up to speed quickly.
What Else Should You Know?
Tax Essentials uses a modern web design. Each Tax Essentials topic resides on one page that's easy to navigate and read thanks to a navigation panel, comfortable typography, bullets, headings, visuals, etc. Instead of a sea of linked text, callout boxes make key content easier to spot. By contrast, competing tax research services suffer from their legacy as print publications, which don't translate well to the web.
Neil J. Squillante is the founder and publisher of TechnoLawyer, an award-winning network of free email newsletters for lawyers and law office administrators. Many consider TechnoLawyer newsletters the only ones they need. A Fastcase 50 award winner, Neil has a long track record of inventing successful advertising and publishing technologies and related best practices. Previously, Neil practiced commercial litigation at Am Law 100 firm Willkie Farr & Gallagher. He received his J.D. from UCLA School of Law and his B.A. from Duke University. At UCLA, Neil served as a Managing Editor of UCLA Law Review.
