Question

The Internal Revenue Code and Treasury regulations are two major sources of federal tax law. Differentiate between the Code and the regulations in terms of their relative weight of authority.

Answer 1

Answer:

The Internal Revenue Code is federal statutory law while treasury regulations can not stand as laws on their own.

Explanation:

The Internal Revenue Code is federal statutory law passed into law by Congress and automatically becomes a law after the President has assented to it. This implies that the two arms of the government must be involved in it before before it becomes a law, otherwise it is null and void.

Treasury regulation is only meant to give interpretations and explanations to the Internal Revenue Code, law or statue, and it is not really a law by itself. The Treasury usually receives authority from the Congress to write regulations that will serve as the official interpretation of statutory law.

However, this does not mean that the regulations does not have appreciably authoritative weight, but it is just that the weight of authority of the regulation is less than the weight of the Internal Revenue Code.