(Part 2) Best tax law books according to redditors

It's merely my favourite book, a total page turner from start to end. The 12th edition is particularly wonderful.

Just finished a law degree in England, so I can give you the resources I used. Webb and Akkouh's book on trusts is relatively short and quite a good introduction. Parker and Mellow's book goes into more detail, but is older, so a bit outdated in parts. I never used Virgo's book but it was recommended to me by quite a few people. If you want the "authoritative" textbook then you'll probably want Megarry and Wade, but it's rather dense and may be too much for your purposes.

There have been a few pretty influential trusts cases in the past couple of years (including a rather important one overturning 120 years of law just this morning!) so you won't just be able to rely on any of these books absolutely, but I assume you're familiar with this if you're doing a masters.

Rule of Proof:

1. Name all the interests and notice the contingent or executory interests
   
   
2. Name all the lives in being
   
   
3. Give birth to afterborns or widows
   
   
   
4. Kill all the lives in being
   
   
5. Add 21 years
   
   
6. Is there ANY possibility of remote vesting? If yes, the clause is VOID ab initio, at the creation of the clause.
   
   
   Example: Jee v. Audley:
   Grant: A to wife for life, then to M and the issue of her body, but if M's issue fails, then to the daughters of J and E then living.
   It is possible that Mary's issue will not fail until much more than 21 years after all persons living at the time of the will have died. Therefore, the "But If" portion is void and the grant reads: A to wife for life, then to M and the issue of her body
   
   It's hard to convey with one example. If you have the time, this workbook by Raymond Coletta takes you through everything you need to know about estates and future interests including RAP with 100+ examples. You can go through the entire thing and a couple of days and by then end you'll have everything mastered or at least close to it. As a bonus, his use of character names from South Park in his hypos makes things a little less dry.
   
   Edit: combined posts

I would also advise you to be aware of what's going through their capital accounts. For a partnership there are technically three sets of capital accounts: 704(b) ('book' per the code), book per the books (GAAP ideally), and then tax capital. Those could potentially all be different, especially if it was property that was contributed to start the partnership. A partnership is basically a big exercise in tracking capital accounts.

As for what you need, as Hitemup27 said, you'll need a set of financials. Last year's return is also reasonable to ask for. That will give you the book sharing ratios, but you absolutely want the partnership agreement as well. That agreement is what dictates how the partnership operates and will give you your TAX sharing ratios. Those are the two most important pieces of information in my mind.

A partnership is a really complex tax beast, arguable the MOST complicated single return type (i.e. not a crazy corporate consolidation). There is a great book out there called the Logic of Subchaper K (http://www.amazon.com/The-Logic-Subchapter-Conceptual-Partnerships/dp/0314233644) that will help with understanding how a partnership operates.

Good luck!

Besides the E&E, this supplement was very helpful. It's literally a book of flowcharts.

https://www.amazon.com/Federal-Income-Tax-Logic-Maps/dp/0314268995/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1539859452&sr=1-1&keywords=federal+income+tax+logic+maps

I also recommend using Bloomberg Tax. Search by IRC provision and go to "related content" for basically everything you'd ever want to know about a given provision. They also have transactional diagrams of many of the cases you'll likely read.

What exactly is confusing to you? I'm a 2L and a significant part of my 1L Property final was on the common law of estates and I don't recall there being anything too incredibly difficult to remember. So maybe there's a problem in understanding?

We used this book for class:

http://www.amazon.com/Colettas-Workbook-Interests-American-Casebook/dp/0314286861/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1411489079&sr=1-1&keywords=future+interest+workbook

And I used the "Understanding Property" supplement myself, which went into more detail in terms of describing things.

Hold your horses there buddy, I'm on your side. But since you seem like a feisty, *competent up-and-comer, maybe you would like to be paid tons of money? Just master these and you too can make money in the great, homestead haven of Texas:
Property Code 688pg.
Probate Code 327pg.
State Tax Code 2389pg.
That's not including Federal Banking Regs, Federal Tax Code, or case law that really governs foreclosure sales.

My point is really this: real estate transactions are not simple endeavors, and believe it or not the people completing these transactions are humans. Humans with families, distractions, hangovers, and Reddit browsing to share their attention with. Humans that make errors the more complicated the transaction gets. Good news is there's a remedy for most of these that doesn't involve a court or ridiculous attorney's fees.