Find PLRs Directly From the IRS

For those that aren’t aware, if you get a citation to a private letter ruling, technical advice memorandum or chief counsel advice given since 1999, you can download them rather quickly from the IRS directly without having to use a search, if you know the secret.

The IRS has an open directory of files at http://www.irs.gov/pub with various subdirectories containing different items published by the IRS. Our interest today is on the http://www.irs.gov/pub/irs-wd directory. That directory contains all of the above letter ruling style documents from 1999 forward.

While you can just go to that directory and scroll (and you’ll scroll quite a bit), the documents are filed with a standard filename structure. All files are PDF formatted files, and they are stored via their PLR reference. The file will start with a two digit year (09 for 2009) followed by the five digits for the unique ruling number for that year (the two digit week number entry and the ruling number within the week).

So to get PLR 200912001, you type into your browser’s address bar the directory name, followed by 0912001.pdf or:

http://www.irs.gov/pub/irs-wd/0912001.pdf

This can be useful if you subscribe to a service that doesn’t get these documents updated quickly and you see a story one Monday morning on a new ruling. It can also be helpful when showing a ruling to a client, since you can show you got it “directly” from the IRS (and quite often on IRS letterhead).

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