Preface

• Pages: 7-8
• Author: Lawrence Zelenak

vii

PREFACE

This book is intended as a study aid for law students taking the

basic course in federal income taxation, and it is therefore largely an

explanation of how the income tax affects individuals. A systematic

treatment of the taxation of corporations and share holders—usually

the subject of an advanced course, and in any event re quiring an

entire volume to itself—is not included. Certain fundamental

elements of the corporate-shareholder system are referred to at

various points, but this is done only as an incident of some other

discussion and never in any real detail. The fo cus here is on the

individual income tax and on the case and statutory materials that

are likely to be covered in an introductory law-school course.

Our approach, we should also state, is anything but

comprehensive. All sorts of topics are omitted which the student may

encounter in the classroom and desire more information about, while

other topics of no greater intrinsic imp ortance are discussed at

length. But we have not attempted to write a treatise, or a summary

of Code sections, or a manual which can be used to answer specific

questions about the tax law. Instead, the aim, which has not changed

since the senior author’s writing of the First Edition several decades

ago, is to disclose the structural characteristics of the income tax

mechanism—how the plumbing works, what’s at stake in the

controversies that arise, what elements of internal consistency o r

inconsistency can be d etected, and so on. Accordingly, we have used

whatever legal materials seemed best to illustrate the technical

components of the system. We have tried to sketch the outline of the

house—or at least one wing of it—but have made no effort to furnish

all the rooms. This concept has led to a selective coverage of the law

(to put it mildly), but it has also made possible a higher level of

coherence and connectedness than could have been attained if mo re

detail had been included.

The organization of the work—Income, Deductions, Attribution,

etc.—roughly mirrors that of the various casebooks in use in the law

schools. Although they differ among themselves in many ways, the

casebooks also exhibit a great many elements of similarity, and it

seems safe to say that the resemblances outnumber the differences.

Large subject-matter h eadings are, of course, alike. In addition, the

casebooks generally employ the same “great” landmark cases to carry

the tax story from one topic to another: a few dozen well-known

Supreme Court decisions are always fe atured, and even the le sser

gleanings from the lower courts and the Internal Revenue Service

are often the same. The notes that follow the cases, as well as the

independent editorial mat erials, are very different in emphasis and

style, and there are many differences in organization which are of