You are the Tax Manager at a large firm. The firm has experienced significant growth in its tax practice. As a result, several new tax staff members were hired. Most of the new tax staff just graduated and have minimal hands-on tax experience. You are a mentor for a number of these new hires and need to help them with their work. Tax research is a skill that every tax accountant should possess. These skills allow tax accountants to provide value-added services to its clients. In addition, these skills are needed to evaluate nonroutine, unusual transactions. Tax research may be needed to defend a tax position questioned by the IRS. One important concept to understand within tax research is the hierarchy of the tax authoritative sources.

Prepare an interoffice decision-aid/memo to your tax staff including the following:

1. The primary and secondary authoritative sources, a description, and the differences between them.
2. The steps needed to conduct tax research, including the use of tax research databases.