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The IRS Publishes Far Fewer PLRs Than It Used To

2023-03-31

The IRS publishes PLRs, TAMs, and CCAs1 on a weekly basis. The IRS refers to these as “written determinations” (here referred to as “WDs”).

Most of the WDs are PLRs. WDs are usually published late Thursday evenings. The number assigned to each WD includes the year, the week, and the ruling number for that week.

Example: PLR 202310006 -- year, week, and number for the week.

The IRS publishes on its website all of the WDs going back to the beginning of 1999. During the twelve years from 1999 to 2010, the IRS published between 1,900 to 2,500 WDs per year. However, during the most recent five years (2018 to 2022) the IRS has published fewer than 1,000 WDs each year.

Below is a chart showing the number of WDs published each year since 1999:


1: Private Letter Ruling, Technical Advice Memorandum, and Chief Counsel Advice, respectively.

Tags: Authority - PLRs / CCAs, Statistics