Recently, Eric Robinson commented that his copy of the tax code had "just under 3,000 pages," a far cry from the 66,498 pages cited in multiple articles on AccountingWEB and in other media. Now, while I have to admit neither I, nor the author of the article containing the reference, personally counted every page of the tax code, however, I have confidence in the quality of the sources AccountingWEB uses. Nor do I doubt Eric's number. So, how do I explain the discrepancy?

First, perhaps I should explain AccountingWEB's criteria for verifying facts like this. Our standard is that if three primary sources independently use a piece of information, it may be considered factual. A primary source is an individual with personal knowledge, an official statement from a company, organization or other entity, or a primary news media source or wire service, such as the Associated Press (AP), Reuters or United Press International (UPI). Information that is not found in at least three primary sources is attributed to the source. The 66K number met this criteria.

Although this standard is more rigorous than those used by many other online and even traditional media, mistakes can be made and inaccurate information can be spread faster than it can be corrected. I wanted to be sure that we are providing readers with the most accurate information available, so I began a search to discover just how and where the primary sources obtained the 66K number.

The author led me to the April 2006 Tax & Budget Bulletin from the CATO Institute, which can be found online at http://www.cato.org/pubs/tbb/tbb-0604-33.pdf. For those unfamiliar with the CATO Institute, it is a non-profit policy research foundation in Washington, D.C. that seeks to expand the parameters of public policy debate and achieve greater involvement of the intelligent, concerned, lay public in questions of policy and the role of government. It turns out that the CATO Institute got the 66K number from CCH.

I called CCH and discovered that the 66K number represents not just the number of pages of the actual tax code but everything needed to understand and apply the federal tax law including: code, regulations, annotations to case law and rulings, CCH explanation, analysis and checklists, and citations. Along with an extensive Topical Index, this material fills the 25 loose-leaf binders (and 66,498 pages) shipped in 2005 as the "CCH Standard Federal Tax Reporter"

The "CCH Standard Federal Tax Reporter" is used as a measure of the size and complexity of the tax code because, unlike other documents related to the tax code, it has remained a stable size. Page size, font size and other aspects have remained the same, allowing for a more accurate gauge of the increasing complexity of the tax code, which was the context in which the number was used.

Written by: Jay Hammond, Managing Editor, AccountingWEB.com
editor@accountingweb.com

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