Campus to clients: the ABCs of acquisitive reorganizations.

• Author: Harrington, Steve

IN FALL 2003, A JOINT TASK FORCE OF THE AICPA and the American Taxation Association (ATA) "conducted a survey to (1) gather information about the current state of affairs in tax education and (2) obtain broad input about the tax component of the accounting curriculum" (Kern and Dennis-Escoffier, "Current Status of the Tax Curriculum in Accounting Programs," 35 The Tax Adviser 712 (November 2004)).

The survey indicated that 43.7% of respondent schools required one tax course and offered one elective course, 29.1% required one tax course, and 11.7% required two tax courses (Id.). Within the first tax course, the survey revealed that little or no coverage related to, among other things, business entity taxation (Dennis-Escoffier and Rubin, "Curriculum Tools for Tax Educators," 39 The Tax Adviser 110 (February 2008)). While the survey contributed to changes in the AICPA's Model Tax Curriculum (MTC), it also suggests the need for tax educators to develop assignments that more efficiently convey important entity tax concepts.

Given the time and resource constraints most tax educators face (see, e.g., McGill and Outstay, "The GAAP in Tax Education: Integrating Tax and Financial Accounting in the Tax Curriculum," 38 The Tax Adviser 118 (February 2007)), faculty need to enhance their courses with new technologies and pedagogies and develop a vision for their courses that they constantly evaluate and refine (see Newmark, "The Introductory Tax Course Revisited," 34 The Tax Adviser 695 (November 2003)). They might also rely on an approach to teaching taxation that focuses on fundamental concepts and the acquisition of tax skills, gained through active participation by the student (see Jones and Duncan, "Teaching the Introductory Tax Course: A New Paradigm," The Journal of American Taxation Association, 95-103 (Spring 1995); Gore and Wong-On-Wing, "The Acquisition and Transfer of Tax Skills," Journal of American Taxation Association, 117-126 (Fall 1998); Dockter, "Taking the Student's Lead in Teaching Tax," American Journal of Business Education, 73-78 (July 2010)). In short, while the MTC, revised in 2007, "does not advocate a particular teaching method, it does call for faculty to use more active teaching methods" (see Dennis-Escoffier, et al., "The Revised Model Tax Curriculum," Issues in Accounting Education, 148 (May 2009)).

By encouraging active learning, tax faculty can overcome the traditional perception that accounting education places too much emphasis on memorization and content, rather than on critical-thinking skills (see Efrat, "Teaching Tax Through the Socratic Method," 39 The Tax Adviser 773 (November 2008)). Research on active learning "suggests that when students develop their own solutions and/ or explanations, they take ownership of the knowledge they gain and are more likely to retain it" (see Chu and Libby, "Writing Mini-Cases: An Active Learning Assignment," Issues in Accounting Education, 245-246 (May 2010)).

As an added incentive to incorporate active, technology-based assignments into courses, faculty will appeal to the "tech savvy" nature of Generation Y students who have grown up with technology and expect immediate feedback (see Manly and Thomas, "Adapting Accounting Education to the Generations: Working With Millennials," 40 The Tax Adviser 119 (February 2009)). Additionally, as CPA firms have begun to use simulations and sophisticated technology to recruit and train Generation Y individuals (see Polimeni, et al., "Using Computer Simulations to Recruit and Train Generation Y Accountants," The CPA Journal, 64-68 (May 2009)), by...