Ideas on incorporating tax policy into a first tax course.

• Author: Camp, Julia M.

For many accounting students, their first tax class is where they decide whether they enjoy taxation. This course may also be the only tax course they take. Introductory tax courses often focus solely on compliance or theory, which can cause some students to lose interest in the topic. Instructors must look for ways to engage students in the subject matter as well as incorporate necessary critical-thinking and problem-solving skills into the course.

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This column discusses a series of class exercises and a comprehensive project that are designed to engage students by bringing tax policy into the introductory tax course. Specifically, these activities are intended to expose students to the political and legal aspects of taxation, to introduce research skills, and to provide opportunities for students to develop professional and technical communication skills. While these activities were designed for use in an undergraduate course, they are also easily adaptable for graduate-level courses.

Short class exercises

These short class exercises are designed to introduce students to tax policy in brief ways. They can typically be completed within a single class period and can be used either as stand-alone exercises or as part of a bigger module on tax policy.

Exercise No. 1: Design your own tax regime

The majority of students enrolled in an introductory tax course have had no prior exposure to tax as a field of academic study. Furthermore, most students are likely to perceive that tax is quite different from the areas of accounting to which they have been exposed in their prior course work. As such, it is important for instructors to set a proper tone on the first day of class to help draw the students' interest. This activity, which has been used by many professors at many institutions over the years, requires no prior tax background and is an excellent activity to administer on the first day of class.

In this activity, students are informed that they have been made the ruler of an independent nation and must design a simple tax system to raise capital to cover costs such as military and infrastructure. To aid in developing this system, they are given a description of three or four specific types of taxpayers such as small business owners, investors, or employees, with various incomes, expenses, and family situations. Students are told that their solution does not need to parallel any governmental tax system that they may know.

The tax systems that students develop are typically creative and thought-provoking, and the ensuing discussion should provide the instructor an opportunity to explain the similarities and differences of the various ideas generated to the U.S. federal tax system. During these conversations, students are challenged to defend their decisions as to who is or is not taxed as well as why the methods they have chosen are appropriate. This typically leads to discussions about the need for taxes to finance government services, fairness, and the role of tax policy in encouraging or discouraging certain types of behavior (all important high-level concepts that students will develop familiarity with as the course progresses). As such, this activity not only serves to generate student interest in the material in an interactive way but also develops an early understanding of important tax concepts that are referred to later in the semester.

Exercise No. 2: Tax article summaries

In this exercise, instructors challenge students to locate articles from reputable newspapers and periodicals that relate to tax topics. Students are asked to briefly summarize the article and to provide their opinion on the tax topic being discussed. These reflections are required to be posted to a discussion forum contained within the learning management system for the course. Posting reflections to a forum allows other students to comment on the article summaries. Alternatively, in every class meeting, a few students could be asked to present an article, leading to a brief class discussion.

Even though introductory tax courses typically focus on U.S. federal tax, students should be encouraged to select articles related to any tax topic that is of interest to them including sales tax, local taxes, and global tax topics. An important goal of the activity is to develop the student's ability to follow current events in taxation and to think broadly about tax policy in a critical way. To encourage active discussion, instructors could require students to comment on...