Not every reference question I am asked is one that I can answer. This is one of those.

Perhaps the very nature of a small public library prevents librarians like me from being experts in any given field - since we have to respond to questions on any possible topic, it helps to know a little about a lot of areas rather than a lot about a single area. Specialists work in academic and large public libraries, and generalists end up in smaller libraries.

But that's not to say that a librarian won't know quite a bit about an area they are interested in. Coworkers of mine could easily specialize in linguistics, pop culture, cooking and modern fiction. Hiking, conspiracy theories, knitting and dystopian novels are some of the particular holes I've dug for myself.

At least, those are all the excuses I can think of for my behavior with this reference question.

A patron sends the following email to our reference desk:

To: Chelmsford Library Reference
Subject: Corporate Tax Rate

Dear Sir/Madam,

I am living in Kuwait and for study purpose I have a 2 US Corporate tax related questions.

A US-Based Company (Domestic Company) have its operations in Foreign Country what tax is levied on this company?

If this domestic company is acquired by a foreign company (and domestic company is still operating in another foreign country)....what will be tax rate implied for that foreign country?

Hope You answer my question

Here's why I answered this question the way I did:

• Although we help anyone who comes in, calls, or emails us, we do give priority to local patrons. He didn't say he was a local resident who just happened to be abroad, and I didn't see his name in our catalog. I honestly have no idea how he found our email address from Kuwait, and that makes me suspicious and reluctant to spend a lot of time on this
• He did mention that he is there for study, and I'm always hesitant with students: the line between helping them do their work and doing their work for them is often blurry. I try to err on the side of less help to start with, but keep checking in to see if they are on the right track
• This is a tax question (and a very specific one), and we have a policy against giving tax advice. Especially with such a specific question, unless you get an answer from a specialist, it's hard to know how much to trust the answer

So, with all that in mind, my reply back to him is below. I knew I wasn't giving him an answer, but I wanted to at least direct him to some resources that might lead him to an answer:

To: [patron]
Subject: Re: Corporate Tax Rate

I'm sorry, but specific tax questions are beyond our expertise here, and also violates our policy against giving tax advice. I did try looking into your request, and found the Internal Revenue Service's International Business page (http://www.irs.gov/businesses/international/), which may lead to the answers you seek.

The IRS also has an office in Philadelphia, PA, USA, that focuses on international issues. Their contact information is listed on http://www.irs.gov/localcontacts/article/0,,id=101292,00.html

In addition, the IRS has technical support for its website, which should aide you in locating the information on their website that will answer your questions: http://www.irs.gov/help/article/0,,id=97185,00.html

Another potential resource for you to contact is the United States Embassy in Kuwait (http://kuwait.usembassy.gov/), which may have an office to help with your questions, or be able to direct you to the government agency that can answer them.

I'm sorry we are not able to answer your questions directly, but I hope some of the above information might help you. If there is anything else we can do, please let us know. Thank you, and take care.

Brian Herzog
Head of Reference
Chelmsford Public Library

This feels like such a cop out, and I feel bad I couldn't come up with a real answer, but this seems like the kind of question someone could spend days researching and still find nothing. The patron did reply with a very polite and gracious thank-you message, but I haven't heard back if he found what he was looking for.

If anyone knows of resource that can answer this, I would appreciate hearing about it.

Posted under Uncategorized on Saturday, February 16th, 2008 at 6:09 pm, by Brian Herzog. Post and comments available via the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.