Tax Notes Today

November 18, 1997 Neiman-Marcus Cookie, Meet the 9,451-Page Internal Revenue Code While some GOP members of Congress rail against a tax code they say has grown to 9,451 pages in length, the January 1997 edition of The Complete Internal Revenue Code (RIA) was only 2,679 pages, including the index, amending acts table, and table of sections.

Among the slices of gospel truth that have been widely circulated in the ongoing debate over the simplification or elimination of the Internal Revenue Code is that that venerable document is 9,451 pages long. See, e.g., "Tax Reform Fever May Be Spreading: After Va. Sweep, GOP Congressional Candidates Take Aim at IRS Code," The Washington Post, Nov. 13, 1997, p. D5. (We'll just note in passing the Ebola viruslike spreading of another canard, that the Internal Revenue Code is the product of the Internal Revenue Service. And members of Congress who continue to call it "the IRS code" should be ashamed.) Back to the main story. A code, any code, that is 9,451 pages long would seem to be a worthy target for the legislative equivalent of SlimFast. But does such a code exist? We dispatched a crack Tax Analysts investigative team to research that question. Here's What We Found Our sleuths located the January 1997 edition of The Complete Internal Revenue Code (RIA), "updated to reflect all tax legislation through December 31, 1996." They turned to the last page -- and it is indeed numbered 9,451. This was clearly good enough for some, but not for us. Aware of the often-confounding pagination system used for statutes, codes, etc., we dug a bit deeper and found sizable gaps in the code's pagination. In fact, we found gaps that would have made Dick Nixon proud. Here is the actual pagination of the Internal Revenue Code:
Index to Code Amending Acts Table Table of Sections Income Tax pp. 101-300 pp. 401-417 pp. 501-529 pp. 1,001-1,575 pp. 2,001-2,420 200 pages 17 pages 29 pages 575 pages 420 pages

pp. 3,001-3,311 pp. 5,001-5,229 Estate and Gift Tax Employment Taxes Excise & Miscellaneous Taxes Procedure and Administration pp. 9,001-9,451 pp. 8,001-8,260 pp. 6,001-6,082 pp. 7,001-7,105

311 pages 229 pages 82 pages 105 pages

260 pages

451 pages ___________ 2,679 pages

Take away the index, amending acts table, and table of sections -which are not part of the code -- and we're left with 2,434 pages. Take away the explanations of amendments that follow each provision (even amendments to repealed provisions!), and the page count shrivels further. For example, nearly 46 pages -- from the middle of the lefthand column on p. 1,234 to the top of p. 1,280 -- consist of nothing but amendments to section 103 and repealed section 103A. So how long is the code? About 2,000 pages seems to be a reasonable guess. Is that too long? Perhaps. But 2,000 is just 21 percent of the mythical 9,451. Now that we have killed that straw man, let the debate continue.