In polite conversation, it is unusual for people to talk about taxes. In other situations, they may be mentioned or discussed. And as we know, they are frequently a topic for political rants and news.

The majority of people only have to deal with taxes about once a year, when the filing and payment (or refund) season for income tax comes around. Folks who choose to do their tax filing themselves may visit the Library to borrow or consult resources like The Ernst & Young Tax Guide or J.K. Lasser's Your Income Tax.

But from time to time, our readers, including business and various other professionals, need advanced research resources, ones that would be used by tax practitioners. The traditional resource for U.S. Federal taxes they have consulted has long been the Standard Federal Tax Reporter. This print publication is from an outfit called Commerce Clearing House (CCH for short), which is also the publisher of many other tax and business related resources, several of which SIBL subscribes to.

Awkward and sometimes even confusing to use, these CCH publications would be updated on a regular basis to reflect changes in tax legislation, regulations, and other laws. The way this was done was replacing or inserting new pages — of almost onion-skin thickness — covering sections of the laws that had been changed. An ingenious solution, though clearly pre-electronic research; one that has served in good stead for a very long time.

I want you to have a single tax!Well, that has been the past through today. But now the future is here, and we are pleased to let everyone know that SIBL subscribes to Wolters Kluwer's CCH Omnitax Library. With both a browse function and full search functionality, this will make your tax research far less taxing. I'll plan to write more about this resource in the future, but in the meantime, if you need to do tax research, please come in and we'll show you how it works.