JCS-5-05. Joint Committee Print. Provides an explanation of tax legislation enacted in the 108th Congress. Arranged in chronological order by the date each piece of legislation was signed into law. This document, prepared by the staff of the Joint Committee on Taxation in consultation with the staffs of the House Committee on Ways and Means and the Senate Committee on Finance, provides an explanation of tax legislation enacted in the 108th Congress. The explanation follows the chronological order of the tax legislation as signed into law. For each provision, the document includes a description of present law, explanation of the provision, and effective date. Present law describes the law in effect immediately prior to enactment. It does not reflect changes to the law made by the provision or subsequent to the enactment of the provision. For many provisions, the reasons for change are also included. In some instances, provisions included in legislation enacted in the 108th Congress were not reported out of committee before enactment. For example, in some cases, the provisions enacted were included in bills that went directly to the House and Senate floors. As a result, the legislative history of such provisions does not include the reasons for change normally included in a committee report. In the case of such provisions, no reasons for change are included with the explanation of the provision in this document. In some cases, there is no legislative history for enacted provisions. For such provisions, this document includes a description of present law, explanation of the provision, and effective date, as prepared by the staff of the Joint Committee on Taxation. In some cases, contemporaneous technical explanations of certain bills were prepared and published by the staff of the Joint Committee. In those cases, this document follows the technical explanations. Section references are to the Internal Revenue Code unless otherwise indicated.

The Model Rules of Professional Conduct provides an up-to-date resource for information on legal ethics. Federal, state and local courts in all jurisdictions look to the Rules for guidance in solving lawyer malpractice cases, disciplinary actions, disqualification issues, sanctions questions and much more. In this volume, black-letter Rules of Professional Conduct are followed by numbered Comments that explain each Rule's purpose and provide suggestions for its practical application. The Rules will help you identify proper conduct in a variety of given situations, review those instances where discretionary action is possible, and define the nature of the relationship between you and your clients, colleagues and the courts.

The budget reconciliation process is an optional procedure that operates as an adjunct to the budget resolution process established by the Congressional Budget Act of 1974. The chief purpose of the reconciliation process is to enhance Congress's ability to change current law in order to bring revenue, spending, and debt-limit levels into conformity with the policies of the annual budget resolution. Reconciliation is a two-stage process. First, reconciliation directives are included in the budget resolution, instructing the appropriate committees to develop legislation achieving the desired budgetary outcomes. If the budget resolution instructs more than one committee in a chamber, then the instructed committees submit their legislative recommendations to their respective Budget Committees by the deadline prescribed in the budget resolution; the Budget Committees incorporate them into an omnibus budget reconciliation bill without making any substantive revisions. In cases where only one committee has been instructed, the process allows that committee to report its reconciliation legislation directly to its parent chamber, thus bypassing the Budget Committee. The second step involves consideration of the resultant reconciliation legislation by the House and Senate under expedited procedures. Among other things, debate in the Senate on any reconciliation measure is limited to 20 hours (and 10 hours on a conference report) and amendments must be germane and not include extraneous matter. The House Rules Committee typically recommends a special rule for the consideration of a reconciliation measure in the House that places restrictions on debate time and the offering of amendments. As an optional procedure, reconciliation has not been used in every year that the congressional budget process has been in effect. Beginning with the first use of reconciliation by both the House and Senate in 1980, however, reconciliation has been used in most years. In three years, 1998 (for FY1999), 2002 (for FY2003), and 2004 (for FY2005), the House and Senate did not agree on a budget resolution. Congress has sent the President 19 reconciliation acts over the years; 16 were signed into law and three were vetoed (and the vetoes not overridden). Following an introduction that provides an overview of the reconciliation process and discusses its historical development, the book explains the process in sections dealing with the underlying authorities, reconciliation directives in budget resolutions, initial consideration of reconciliation measures in the House and Senate, resolving House-Senate differences on reconciliation measures, and presidential approval or disapproval of such measures. The text of two relevant sections of the Congressional Budget Act of 1974 (Sections 310 and 313) is set forth in the Appendices.