Sources
What the library covers, and what it doesn’t.
Virtus researches public federal tax sources. Here is what is in the library today, what is planned, and what it does not cover.
In the library today: IRS rulings
Private letter rulings and the other written determinations the IRS publishes on irs.gov. The collection is defined as every written determination in the IRS’s public electronic index, checked against that index. Pages that cannot be read reliably are held back from search.
What each ruling carries
- The original PDF exactly as the IRS published it, with its release date and document number.
- Its precedential status: a written determination is issued to one taxpayer and cannot be cited as precedent (IRC § 6110(k)(3)).
- Page references for quoted passages, so an answer can point to the page it relies on.
- Text transcribed from a scanned page is labeled as a transcription, never presented as the official text.
- When a ruling names an Internal Revenue Code section or a Treasury regulation and the official text is available, the reader opens that section.
Planned, not in the library yet
The product plan names four more families of federal tax authority. None is in the library today.
Internal Revenue Bulletin
Revenue rulings, revenue procedures, notices, and announcements.
Internal Revenue Code
Title 26 as a complete, searchable collection of sections.
Treasury regulations
The current Title 26 regulations as a complete, searchable collection.
U.S. Tax Court
Opinions and orders.
What Virtus does not cover
- Rulings and other records available only by request, and older records the IRS has not published electronically.
- Commercial secondary material: treatises, editorial headnotes, annotations, and newsletters.
- A full citator. Virtus does not track every later document that cites, follows, or criticizes a ruling.
- State and international tax law, and cases from courts other than the U.S. Tax Court.
- Your own files. Virtus does not accept client documents.
Changelog
Changes to Virtus you can see, newest first.
- Added a Cookie Policy, clearer dispute terms, and our published contact addresses.
- Replaced a third-party visit tracker with our own visit count, which sets no cookies and stores no IP address.
- The home page examples now quote a real IRS private letter ruling.
- Company sign-in now includes automatic staff access and is available on Starter as well as Business.
- Fixed a case where the PDF viewer could fail to start.
- Pages load faster, and PDF citations and Compare are quicker on phones.
- A new reading typeface, a quieter palette, and a greeting on the research home.
- Highlight an original PDF and download it with your highlights.
- Compare marks the differences between two documents in place.
- Citations in a chat answer open the original PDF at the exact page.
- A redesigned research chat, source list, and document reader.
Start with the rulings you need.
Search IRS rulings with answers that cite the page, or ask us to walk you through it.