Customer Reviews

South-Western Federal Taxation: Comprehensive 2009 (with TaxCut® Tax Preparation Software CD-ROM) (West's Federal Taxation: Comprehensive Volume)

5 star:		(9)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(3)

 

 

I had to buy this text book for a college taxation class. Initially I thought this book was ok. But, then I tried actually reading it and realized this book wasn't written with too much care in terms of presenting information in a logical sequence or in an understandable way.

I often would have to go to websites to get the kind of understandable explanation that this book should have given. Its written in a really choppy style and often is too vague or general without fully explaning things.

This book needs some serious editing for readability, but then again text book companies don't generally care about making the content easily digestable. Teh just want to make sure the author has a Phd.

This book was great, if you like reading books the seem to have been written by robots.

I would definitely not buy this book unless it is required for a class. If you just want to understand the US tax code and how to file your taxes definitely look elsewhere. IRS publications are way more helpful and also are free.

The wording is a bit confusing at times and I find the problems to difficult to work out without examples in the text to look at. I had not choice it was for a class.

This 2009 Edition includes 2007 TaxCut software. If you expected to file your 2008 taxes with this purchase, you will probably be disappointed - like I am.

The Comprehensive 2009 Federal Taxation instruction book provides detailed information in easy-to-read wording with examples to explain every law and code. At the end of each chapter there are more dicussion questions and problems. I definitely recommend this book to anyone with a basic accounting background who wishes to learn the finer points of tax law.

I've only been through one chapter, but so far I am pleased with this book. It gives tons of examples throughout each chapter since tax accounting involves many unique situations to which you apply a set of laws (albeit constantly evolving laws). It's a great book for a Tax I course, the writing is easy to understand, and the problems at the end of each chapter really help you apply the important things.

Oh yeah, and it also shipped fast too!

Hi. The book is ok. It looks like new. Surprise came when I opened it. CD was not there. Inside of the book was a paper with the name of completely another person and it was addressed to that person, instead to me who ordered the book.

:)

Nonsense!

:)

Anyway, hope you guys will not do it to someone else the same thing next time.

Sorry I give you only one star for it.

Everything else is ok.

;)

In summary, the book uses unnessarily confusing style, seemingly assumes the reader knows the subject already and does not provide computation formula or details to solve the problems behind the chapters.
"Eater of books" has suggested others to buy buy "Income Tax Fundamentals" by Whittenburg and Altus-Buller instead.

I had a terrible experience with this book.
The author does not use plain English or reader-friendly style to explain the subject. I often found that author's long sentences unnessarily caused confusion and awkwardness. The book gave me an impression that the author favors long sentence just for the sake of it without consideration of unnessary confusion and awkwardness readers will experience. The explanation in this book was as if the author is expecting readers know the subject already. Sometime the book describes the material in detail while other times not without explaning what kinds of details matter and do not matter. I highly doubt that there is an editor who make sure the book is reader friendly.

Besides the reader-unfriendliness of this book, I found that the questions behind the book ask things not covered in the book. When the questions were covered in the book, they were still most of the time very difficult to answer because of the lack of explanations in the chapters to deal with the details. As I mentioned above, the book seldom explains what types of details matter and do not matter. On top of that, the details mentioned in the book often time have arbitrary link between each other because of the nature of the law. Thus while I was solving problems I found myself guessing a lot, helplessly striving to find meaningful link or pattern that might help me to "guess" right. Instead of reviewing the things covered to make sure I understand them correctly, it seems the questions were designed to make readers learn new things with time-consuming extra research not to mention whether one will find one ever. I remember I had more questions in my head after "solving" the problems with a lot of meaningless guessing than before "solving" them. Instructors should not expect students to solve the questions without an access to the answer manual.

It is a common sense that people buy a course book, instead of doing self-research, to learn new things in an organized way and more time efficient way. I question this book if it has achieved any one of these.

Here is more in-depth reviews from other people I sympathize with.

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This books is a disservice to those trying to learn federal income tax. This is a book on tax law, not on how to prepare individual tax returns or to prepare for the CPA exam. In short, save your money and buy "Income Tax Fundamentals" by Whittenburg and Altus-Buller. For comparison, when discussing medical expense deductions, this book splits the dicussion into two chapters seven chapters apart and never states the formula. Income Tax Fundamentals has as the last sentence of the first paragraph "here's the formula to calculate".

Also in the South-Western book you will never see a 1040 or any of the supporting schedules because it is about tax LAW. In the Whittenburg book EVERY chapter shows you the forms and explains how to fill them out in detail and how to calculate the amounts because it is a tax ACCOUNTING textbook.

Here's brief list of issues I had with this book
- It is completely lacking in clarity because it never walks thr reader through how to do the tasks, it provides an illustrative situation, states the amount of tax owed and moves on. There is no step-by-step as to how the answer was derived or how you could do it yourself. This leaves you blindly mixing and matching numbers to try to figure out how to reproduce the result.
- the text frequently makes assertions in the examples that are not supported by the text leading to the example (in some cases, the example can be explained by information several pages later -- where the example SHOULD have occured
- it will provide lists of exceptions or rules, but then not explain what they mean. For instance when discussing Hobby Losses, the book states 9 rules to determine whether an activity is a hobby or a business, but doesn't inform the reader which would apply: "The expertise of the taxpayer" would that make it a hobby or a business? The book doesn't say. "The expectation that the assets will increase in value" Again, does that make it a hobby or a business?
- When discussing the restrictions on deductions for transactions between related parties, it covers Losses, Unpaid Expenses and Interest and THEN at the end defines what "related parties" means!
- It does next to nothing to inform the student HOW to do much of anything; it simply states what the rules are and moves on
- frequently it uses BUSINESS examples throughout the text instead of individual examples (this has lead to extreme confusion in the class over a test question where students, who had taken taxation of corporations, got the question wrong). Although many individual filers have private businesses, the book provides as an example whether "Blackbird Airlines" a non-private company can deduct the cost of its federally mandated engine tests!

It goes on like this for 800+ pages. It's unconscionable!

If this text is required in your class, write up a formal complaint to your school (I am documenting the flaws I have found and including page numbers), and during the class review share your thoughts on the text.

This book is a waste of time and trees!


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This is yet another book from Hoffman and South Western publishing on tax LAW, not tax ACCOUNTING. This book is good for advanced coverage of corporate tax accounting, its use as an introduction to corporate tax accounting is a crime. It never tells you how to prepare a tax return, you never are asked to fill out any forms, it never instructs you how to calculate the taxes or provide walkthrough examples of the same.

This is not a taxation of corporations and partnerships 101 book, which is what a lot of colleges seem to be using it for, this is a book on corporate tax LAW for people who already know how to calculate the taxes and fill out the forms (what I need to know and paid to learn). This is 301 material "Advanced corporate tax accounting theory".

Here's a "problem" assigned to me from the book. "locate the following tax services in your library and indicate the name of the publisher and whether the service is organized by topic or by Code Section". No, I will not waste my time this way. This teaches me nothing about how to calculate the taxes and fill out the forms.

When you do get to problems that ask you to calculate the taxes you'll be dumbfounded since there is no place in the book that walks you through how to actually do it. Rather you have to surmise how it might be done from examples. So instead of building your skills, you spend most of your time mixing and matching numbers to try to find out how they were combined in the example to arrive at the answer and then applying that haphazard approach to your homework.
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I had to buy this text book for a college taxation class. Initially I thought this book was ok. But, then I tried actually reading it and realized this book wasn't written with too much care in terms of presenting information in a logical sequence or in an understandable way.

I often would have to go to websites to get the kind of understandable explanation that this book should have given. Its written in a really choppy style and often is too vague or general without fully explaning things.

This book needs some serious editing for readability, but then again text book companies don't generally care about making the content easily digestable. Teh just want to make sure the author has a Phd.

This book was great, if you like reading books the seem to have been written by robots.

I would definitely not buy this book unless it is required for a class. If you just want to understand the US tax code and how to file your taxes definitely look elsewhere. IRS publications are way more helpful and also are free.

the book came to me well packaged. i didn't care for the taxCut software, i liked the turbo tax they had in 2008 better. but over all the book is a grood study tool.

I purchased a tax book for a tax class and it had everything I needed. The CD was included, the book was in great condition with very minimal damage. The CD did not appear to have been opened at all. Also the shipping time was quick about a week or less. Transaction went through easily and received the expected product in a timely manner.

Was shipped fast! There was a lot more writing in the book than I expected, but still happy with the book!