Federal Taxation: Basic Principles

The book is well written and very informative, even for the novice tax preparer. Make sure to request the code to log onto the companion Web site. The Website and the book must be used together to get a full understanding of the materials presented in the course. If you purchased a used book, the publisher will email a free code to access the Web site.

This is a good text book on taxation. Nice font and hard cover - However it works best if you are used to referring to the sections of the US tax code. What could make it work better would be to have more diagrams to illustrate the "flow chartish way" of the written material of this book to illustrate the key points in each chapter. To reiterate , the book seems to be written in a flow chart manner.. would be good to take it a step furthur and have some nice diagrams put in. The practical examples are a no frill type , exact and to the point which is good in a distracting subject like taxation where one topic overlaps and extends to another chapter in the book. They have managed to box it up nicely into compartments which makes it easy for the student to integrate the concepts in his mind, rathar than have someone not only "cook the dish" for you but also "spoon feed it to you". It stops short of spoon feeding which is good thing because you have to have your own take on a particular topic. It helps you in grounding you to the basics of taxation, in my opinion. However it does not list where to find answers to questions at the back of the book, which is very very important especially for a tax book. Update to my review: Currently for tax year 2008 sales tax is an option as an itemized deduction - under section 164 of the Tax code , which was extended thru the tax years 2009 -source http://www.irs.gov/pub/irs-pdf/i1040sa.pdf page 1 look under the head " State and Local general sales taxes" however Chapter 8 where this topic is covered page 8-7 para 8101 point 4 " State and local general sales taxes ( for tax years beginning before 2008)" kind of leaves you with unclear definition of applicability....