Campus to clients: education for today's business needs: curriculum tools for tax educators.

• Author: Dennis-Escoffier, Shirley

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A completely revised Model Tax Curriculum and a new website with content from the AICPA's Next Generation Task Force are among the new tools available to tax faculty seeking to modify their course offerings and to help prepare students to enter the accounting profession.

Revision of the Model Tax Curriculum

The AICPA'S Model Tax Curriculum (MTC) was first developed in 1996 and was modified in 1999; in 2007 it was completely revised. The original MTC was created because the AICPA'S Tax Education Committee was concerned with the topical coverage in the undergraduate tax curriculum, particularly the first tax course. Traditionally, the first tax course emphasized individual taxation while the second focused on business entities. The committee was concerned that if students took only one tax course, they would not be exposed to important business taxation topics. Although the original task force's charge was to develop a model tax curriculum for both the undergraduate and graduate levels, it was to specifically focus on developing content recommendations for a single, stand-alone undergraduate tax course that might be a student's only exposure to tax.

Both the original MTC and the 1999 version were very prescriptive, suggesting a list of technical topics and a recommended number of classroom hours for each topic. These early versions included recommendations for an introductory undergraduate tax course and an advanced tax course, as well as a detailed list of recommended topics for an MBA course, for a Masters of Accounting with tax emphasis, and for a Masters of Science in Taxation program.

Since the early versions of the MTC were developed, there have been a number of changes both in accounting education and in the profession. First, the AICPA released its Core Competency Framework, defining a set of skills-based competencies needed by all students entering the accounting profession. The framework is an online resource (see www.aicpa-eca.org) that educators can use in curriculum reform to help students develop the skills necessary to succeed in the accounting profession. These competencies are arranged into three broad categories:

1. Functional (including decision modeling, risk analysis, measurement, reporting, research, and leveraging technology to develop and improve functional competencies);

2. Personal (including professional demeanor, problem solving and decision making, interaction, leadership, communication, project management, and leveraging technology to develop and improve personal competencies); and

3. Broad business perspective (including strategic and critical thinking, industry and sector perspectives, international and global perspectives, resource management, legal and regulatory perspectives, marketing and client focus, and leveraging technology to develop and enhance a broad business perspective).

Second, the implementation of the 150-hour requirement in more states affected the accounting curriculum, as did the introduction of the new computer-based CPA examination (see Dennis-Escoffier et al., "Preparing Students for the New CPA Examination," 34 The Tax Adviser (February 2003): 108). The new online exam, and in particular the simulations, are intended to assess the skills required for entry-level CPAs. The skills tested on the CPA exam are shown in Exhibit 1, along with their related core competency.

Third, accreditation standards shifted from an input-driven model to a more flexible mission-driven model in which outcomes are evaluated. The Association for the Advancement of Collegiate Schools of Business (AACSB International) added an assurance of learning approach that requires programs to articulate their learning goals and to demonstrate through outcome-based assessments that students are meeting those goals.

Finally, the Enron and WorldCom bankruptcies and the enactment of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act expanded the knowledge base expectation of tax practitioners to include generally accepted accounting principles (GAAP) as they apply to tax accounting (see McGill and Outslay, "The GAAP in Tax Education: Integrating Tax and Financial Accounting in the Tax Curriculum," 38 The Tax Adviser (February 2007): 118). The implementation of FIN 48 has made it more important than ever for tax students to have a good understanding of the relationship between financial accounting and tax.

To address this changing environment, the AICPA's Pre-certification Education Executive Committee organized a joint task force of American Taxation Association (ATA) and AICPA members to revise the MTC. The task force surveyed all ATA members on the content and structure of their accounting curriculum's tax component. The survey results (reported in Kern and Dennis-Escoffier, "Current Status of the Tax Curriculum in Accounting Programs," 35 The Tax Adviser (November 2004): 712) indicated that the first tax course had little or no coverage of tax research, tax planning, business entity taxation, or the interaction between taxes and financial reporting. The results were discussed during a session at the...