What the Internal Revenue Bulletin Is (and Isn't)

The Internal Revenue Bulletin is the authoritative instrument by which the Internal Revenue Service publishes its official position on published guidance items. Revenue Rulings, Revenue Procedures, Treasury Decisions, Notices, and Announcements are all promulgated in the Bulletin. What appears in the Bulletin is what the Service has published; anything else is not.

The IRS publishes a very large body of explanatory material — instructions to forms, publications, news releases, taxpayer-facing FAQs, and web pages. That material is often useful and often accurate, but it is not the Internal Revenue Bulletin, and the Service itself is clear that it does not carry the same authority as guidance published in the Bulletin.

A weekly issue of the Internal Revenue Bulletin has a fixed internal structure. Part I contains Rulings and Decisions under the Internal Revenue Code. Part II covers Treaties and Tax Legislation. Part III consists of Administrative, Procedural, and Miscellaneous items — this is where most Notices and Revenue Procedures appear. Part IV contains Items of General Interest.

The Bulletin also carries a Finding List of prior published items that are modified, superseded, or otherwise affected by the current issue. The Finding List is how the Service records the moving relationships between published items — it is the primary mechanism by which the Bulletin functions as a self-updating record.

The Bulletin is the vehicle by which the Service accepts institutional responsibility for a published position. The publication decision — what appears in the Bulletin, in what Part, with what Finding List entries — is itself a substantive editorial act by the Service. Reading in the Bulletin means reading what the Service has published as its position, not what a Service employee or a Service web page has stated informally.