Taxes and Business Strategy is the first tax book I've seen which teaches you to comfortably analyze the effects of taxation. Most other books just detail the current tax law, which causes them to be slowly invalidated as tax laws change. Because this book focuses on the analysis of tax efficiency, its lessons are portable across time.

The big lessons:

  1. Tax strategy is hard because of (a) Regulatory change, and (b) The number of options available.
  2. Tax strategy is easy because you know that (a) The more money you save, the more likely that law is going to change, and (b) The number of options fall away rapidly during an analysis.
  3. All of your economic exchanges between you and 'someone else' include a silent third partner, your government. When you are tax strategizing, you need to examine the tax impact on all three parties. You may be able to shift tax burden to 'someone else', or you may be able to shift it to your government. Regardless, one of the three is going to pay.

Good++ law sites:

  1. findlaw.com
  2. nolo.com
  3. The US Code
Although it's funny that if you google for power of arrest, all the sites seem to be British. It might be interesting to talk with some Brits re: law enforcement.