Distinguish settled from unsettled, and make the model say which
Lesson 4 of 6 · Tax research that survives review
1 · Learn the move · Constraints + negative instructions
The model's default register is settled. Every sentence arrives with the same confidence, which is fine for the standard deduction and ruinous for a question the circuits split on. The constraint is one word per proposition: SETTLED, where statute and regulation say it plainly and nothing contradicts them; CONTESTED, where there is authority on both sides or the Service has taken a position courts have not adopted; OPEN, where the authority is silent, new or thin. The negative instructions do the rest: never state a contested or open proposition in the declarative; never present the client's preferred reading as the only reasonable one; never let a secondary source settle what the primary sources leave open. A memo written this way reads less impressively and survives a reviewer, an examiner and a court. The model can sort by this scheme if you make it. Whether each sort is right is yours, by opening the authority; and the sort itself is marked VERIFY like everything else.
Rewrite this research memo so that every proposition of law carries one of three labels: SETTLED (statute or regulation says it plainly, nothing contradicts), CONTESTED (authority on both sides, or a Service position courts have not adopted), OPEN (silent, new or thin authority). Constraints: never state a CONTESTED or OPEN proposition in the declarative; never present my client's preferred reading as the only reasonable one; never let a treatise or an article settle what the primary sources leave open; every authority stays marked VERIFY. Add a one-line reason for each label.
2 · Your turn. You write the prompt
Taxpayer D is a partner in a fund and wants to treat a payment as a return of capital rather than a guaranteed payment. The model's first draft says, in six confident sentences, that the payment is a return of capital, citing the statute, a regulation and a treatise. The reviewer's note: 'Paragraphs 2 and 4 are contested in two circuits and the draft does not say so.'
Write the prompt for this scenario as given, or swap in a real one from your own work. The score works the same either way.
Remember: the AI sees only your prompt, not this page. If the situation isn't in your prompt, it doesn't exist.
Optional. These shape the output when you run your prompt below, not your score.