Customer Reviews

Federal Income Tax: Examples and Explanations (Examples & Explanations)

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1 star:		(1)

 

 

Hello, I am a second year law student enrolled in a class on taxation. Professor Griffith is my instructor, and I have to say that this book is so clearly written that I did not once have to open up my $90 casebook. Examples and Explanations gives clear and concise real world examples that allow anyone (even people without a tax or business background) to understand both the black letter law and the public policy reasons for our tax code. EXCELLENT. HIGHLY RECOMMENDED.

I am taking a federal income tax course that uses a textbook which consists mainly of court cases.. and written in hard-to-understand "judicial language". We discuss the cases and go over the problem-solving questions at such a fast pace that sometimes I just blindly jot down notes and try to make sense of them afterwards.

This is where the supplementary comes in. The glossary neatly lists the various topics. There are introductions to the important code sections, followed by sample questions and detailed explanations. It helped me understand the more difficult concepts (which wasn't difficult at all) such as 1245/1250 recapture, disaster gain/loss, depreciation, and other calculations. While it does not include most of the court cases from my main textbook, some of the major cases are briefly discussed throughout.

This book is no substitute for class attendance, but it did make studying run smoothly during exam week.

Clear and concise, helpful explanations. Great for a general tax course. If you are using the ..., Bankman, et al textbook, this is is MUST. If you are studying business tax (unless home/small business), this is not the book for you. Griffith rocks!!!

Great explanations of the material covered and excellent question & answer sections. The explanations to the answers are very helpful.

I wasn't usually an examples and explanations kind of guy in law school. I hardly ever used them, or when I did I thought they weren't too helpful. I just made my own outlines.

But for tax, this thing saved my life. Especially if you're using the Bankhead text that goes with it for your class, but even if you're not, since its geared toward code sections.

Basically it just gives you a code section, and then gives examples of how the code works in practice. It makes all the rules easy. I learned everything I needed to take my tax exam in about 12 hours of studying with this book.

I normally like the examples and explanations books - even though they are extremely wordy - but generally I find that the extra wordiness at the end, helps the concepts to make sense in the end. I'm looking for the second half of this book - I can't believe how general all the explanations are - and in paragraph form for a tax course?! Um = absurd. The equations (for example calculated excludable amounts for annuities and life insurance plans) are not even written out! They're mushed in words in paragraph/ sentence form - a truly awful awful awful way to learn rather simple arithmetic equations. This book is garbage - I'm happy I realized this now with a month to go in the semester and did not wait last minute to depend on this book - cause I would have been screwed. I want the authors to give a refund. USELESS. Can give it to the birds to make a nest our of.

Much of the law in this is outdated. However, for a few dollars, I found it to be useful. I knew I had the law down cold when I could instantly spot the areas of outdated law in this book.

This book is helpful in regards to giving you a general overview of the material. However, I purchased this book to better understand annuities, discharge of indebtedness and section 1031 of the tax code. These were the topics that the authors did a horrible job of explaining. Unfortunately, these topics are very important. I have only read up to the start of chapter 3 in this book and I am worried that further reading will only further confuse me.

I must say, this book is better than nothing, but I wish it was better.