Tax concepts and their importance in the undergraduate curriculum

Accounting and tax education groups have stressed the need to teach the undergraduate tax courses in a more conceptual manner. However, no conceptual framework for the taxation system has been developed. This exploratory study was conducted to survey the opinions of tax professionals regarding tax concepts and their general acceptance. The concepts identified in this study should serve as the foundation of an orderly theoretical structure for taxation. Finally, the results revealed that the normative concepts are stressed by tax educators in teaching the basic tax course, although in varying degrees of emphasis.     

Faculty perspectives on international taxation topics

This paper presents perspectives of accounting faculty members on the relative importance of topics that should be presented in a one-semester graduate level international taxation course. Understanding of international taxation has become an increasingly critical part of the tax and accounting practices of the big four and other major public accounting firms as well as to U.S. multinational business firms. Therefore, college and universities may find it useful to provide at least some coverage of international taxation topics in a separate course or as part of other courses in their tax and accounting programs. If a separate course is offered, an important consideration of which topics should be covered in the course, since there are more topics than can be reasonably covered in one course. This paper analyzes the responses of members of the American Accounting Association's International Accounting Section to a survey of which topics should be included in a one-semester international tax course. Results are compared with those of prior studies to determine whether and the extent to which perspectives have changed over time and based on the type of survey respondent. Findings of this paper will offer guidance regarding topic selection to the accounting faculty members who are charged with developing an international taxation course. The findings may also be of interest to anyone concerned with international business in general and taxation in particular.     

Using journal entries to teach partnership tax: An illustrative case

The use of journal entries to teach partnership taxation concepts provides students with a visual tool that liberates them from the memorization of formulas that has long been a staple in partnership tax education. Employing journal entries as our pedagogy, we present a case designed to be a comprehensive project for a stand-alone graduate partnership taxation course. We also provide guidance for how individual components within the case can be assigned, which could be particularly useful to instructors of business entity tax courses. Our case provides a resource that will assist instructors in teaching and students in understanding (1) the book accounting requirements, and (2) the interrelationship between the tax and book reporting requirements. Graduate tax students who completed this case in its entirety agree that the case meets its stated learning objectives, and that journal entries are an effective tool for analyzing partnership tax transactions and make learning partnership taxation easier.     

The Valuation of Deferred Taxation: Evidence from the UK Partial Provision Approach

The UK provides a virtually unique environment in which to examine the information content of the partial provision approach to deferred tax accounting. In addition this issue is of particular interest to UK accounting standard setters in the light of trends towards international accounting standard harmonisation. Taking the total amount of deferred taxation to be equal to the partial balance sheet provision plus the potential portion appearing in the notes, this study tests the relationship between these various deferred tax components and market value. It also examines the economic rationale for the potential portion. The study is based on 1,512 company/years from the period 1989–1991. It finds that, while the full amount of deferred taxation is not valued by the market as a liability, there is evidence of the partial balance sheet provision being so valued. There is also evidence that the potential portion is positively related to market value, consistent with its proxying for information about future growth. This result is supported by the positive relation between the potential portion and measures of future capital spending, indicative of an underlying economic rationale for this deferred taxation component. From a regulatory perspective, the study concludes that the main benefit of the partial provision approach is that the balance sheet amount constitutes a reasonably reliable measure of the portion likely to crystallise as a liability, information that would be lost were only the full amount to be disclosed.     

Integrating tax and financial accounting concepts into the partnership accounting curriculum

The integration of partnership financial accounting and tax accounting into the accounting curriculum has become very important in the current environment of increased partnership activity. The primary purpose of this article is to assist accounting educators in both financial and tax courses with this integration process. To accomplish this objective, a partnership's life cycle is detailed from formation to liquidation. Journal entries are presented to enable the reader to quickly assimilate the transactions involved in the life cycle. Supporting worksheets and partners' tax basis tables are also presented to depict the position of the partnership and partners, respectively, at the end of each stage of the life cycle. This article's example is designed to permit accounting instructors to integrate both tax and financial accounting concepts when teaching either advanced accounting or partnership taxation in the most efficient manner.     

会计人才能力需求与本科会计教育改革:利益相关者的调查分析

本研究利用焦点团体访谈和问卷调查方法,探讨中国本科会计教育改革的问题。通过对会计师、会计学生和会计教师三类会计教育利益相关者的结构化访谈和问卷调查,研究不同利益相关者在会计毕业生能力项目和会计教学方法两个方面的期望认知。研究结果表明,不同利益相关者之间对部分能力项目和教学方法存在认知差异,教师是否接受海外教育背景对这两类项目的认知差异不显著。根据研究结果,我们分析了其产生的原因以及对中国会计教育改革的启示。     

Governance,tax and folk tales

This paper develops a particular narratological approach to analyse a common category of narratives: individuals’ accounts of their organization’s context and purpose. In two phases of interview research with 45 senior UK accounting professionals (tax officials, tax advisors to, and tax directors of, multinational companies) we focus on a pivotal period in the governance of UK taxation. We advocate analysing what ordinarily could be called ‘real world’ narratives about this context (‘tax tales’) as if they were folk tales. This approach draws on an influential analysis of folk tales by Propp. Our theoretical contribution is to show how features of strong or dominant plots, of the kind that structure folk tales, also help accounting professionals to make sense of this complex governance environment. This helps us understand personal projects of sense making in a context that is technically, legally and morally complex and has implications for governance, for policy, and for accounting as a professional project.     

Profit Measurement and UK Accounting Standards: A Case of Increasing Disharmony in Relation to US GAAP and IASs

UK accounting practice differs from International Accounting Standards (IASs) particularly with regard to amortisation of goodwill, provision for deferred taxation and the accounting treatment of pension costs. Under the core standards programme of the IASC the IASs have emerged closer to US practice. This paper evaluates the profit of those UK companies reporting to the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) in 1988 and 1994, spanning a period which saw the establishment of the ASB and the implementation of the IASC's comparability project. An increasing gap was found between the reported profit under UK accounting principles and that restated under US GAAP. The difference lay most frequently in accounting for goodwill, provision for deferred tax, and the accounting treatment of pension costs, with accounting for goodwill showing a particularly significant impact in 1994. Notwithstanding the introduction of FRS 10, an overall impression of increasing disharmony could continue to cause reconciliations to be required of UK companies seeking full listing on a US stock exchange, with consequent disadvantage relative to companies in other European countries seeking international capital in the US.     

税务会计原则、财务会计原则的比较与思考

由于税务会计要以税法为导向,因此,体现税收原则的税收核算原则也就是税务会计原则。税务会计原则一般都隐含在税法中,它虽然远远不如(财务)会计原则那么明确、那么公认,但其刚性、其硬度,却要明显高于(财务)会计原则,纳税人一旦违反,就要受到税法等相关法律的惩处。文章对由税法主导的税务会计原则与投资人导向的财务会计原则进行了比较,从中可见两者的差异及其产生的原因。研究税务会计原则与财务会计原则的差异,旨在探讨如何构建符合国际化发展趋势的税务会计与财务会计的关系模式。     

Destination taxation and evasion: Evidence from U.S. inter-state commodity flows

Tax evasion has been an important issue in the accounting literature for several decades, but the focus has been on corporate income taxes. We develop a new way to examine tax evasion that focuses on corporate transactions, rather than corporate profits. Specifically, we examine how commodity flows respond to destination sales taxes, allowing for tax evasion as a function of distance between trade partners. After accounting for transportation costs, we find that the effect of taxes decreases as distance increases. This is consistent with the notion that longer distances between trade partners hinder government oversight and increase the likelihood of successful tax evasion. Our results are robust with respect to outliers, strategic neighbor effects, information sharing agreements and other re-specifications. These results are important to policymakers because they evidence the difficulty of enforcing destination taxation in open economies such as U.S. states and the European Union.     

Teaching tax principles and policy: comparing the single textbook and wider reading approaches

This study set out to test the relative merits and desirability of teaching tax principles and policy based either on a single textbook, or by using the more traditional UK social science method of wider reading and a more individualistic approach to learning. The method employed was to teach taxation using the two approaches on two parallel public finance courses and to assess the outcomes in the form of student course essays and examination answers together with a questionnaire survey of students' opinion. The balance of advantage appeared to lie with the single textbook approach.     

论我国所得税会计处理方法的选择——基于所得税会计准则的国际比较研究

会计制度与税收制度之间差异的协调在相当长一段时间内都将是会计理论界与实务界的热点问题。当前,国际会计准则的制定,更多受到了英美等发达市场经济国家的影响,会计信息更强调反映企业的长期盈利能力,而非限于企业短期盈利状况;相应地,其会计报告的概念基础不再采用“收入费用观”,而是转向了“资产负债观”,在所得税会计处理方法上,也强调采用资产负债表债务法。我国新发布的所得税会计准则的一个突出变化是,强调采用资产负债表债务法,是我国所得税会计准则国际趋同的一个重要体现。     

本科教育中税收学应用性人才培养的思考

高等教育的大众化是应用性人才培养的一个重要条件.新形势下,社会对税收学应用性人才培养提出了更高要求.税收学应发挥其独有的专业特点与优势,培养出更多高质量的税收学应用性人才.税收学应用性人才培养在明确的目标定位下,需要通过优化课程体系、优化师资队伍和优化实践教学等方式逐步推进.     

Organizing tax instruction: Evidence regarding how students organize tax knowledge

An important part of accounting curriculum reform is a movement away from traditional methods of organizing accounting courses toward improved organization schemes. Two basic approaches to organizing the content of tax courses are a transaction-based scheme and an entity-based scheme. This paper reports the results of an experiment that investigates which scheme is more consistent with how incoming masters in tax students organize tax knowledge and how different schemes affect the manner in which graduating students organize tax knowledge. Ninety students drawn from two full-time masters in taxation programs participated in the study. Subjects individually completed three separate tasks that measured how they organize tax knowledge at both the start of their degree program and three semesters later at or near the end of their program. The results for all three tasks indicate that incoming tax students organize tax knowledge around the type of transaction involved. The results for two of the three tasks indicate that the students' transaction focus did not change during their graduate tax program, whereas the results for the third task indicate that the students' transaction focus increased during their graduate tax experience. The implications of these findings for improving tax instruction are discussed.     

Taxation in Australian undergraduate accounting courses: a review and case note

This review note outlines and reviews the presence of the subject of taxation in undergraduate accounting courses in Australia. It covers the period 1945–1995. Through the outline and review an explanation is provided of why the subject of taxation was present in the accounting degree in Australia. A review is made of one long-standing accounting degree course to provide a case illustration and explanation of how taxation was located within a degree. Some comparisons are made with UK findings of how and why taxation was located in undergraduate accounting degrees. The rationales for the inclusion of taxation in undergraduate degrees are also explored.     

会计教学体系研究:来自英国大学的借鉴

通过在英国有关大学的实地调研,文章对英国大学会计教学目标、会计专业课程体系、会计教与学、会计课程考评等几个方面进行了考察和分析。在此基础上,借鉴英国大学的做法,提出了改进中国会计教育的教学目标、教学过程、课程体系和学生学习过程等的具体途径和方法。     

From Disconnected to Integrated tax and financial systems A post-IFRS evaluation of evolution of Tax and Financial Reporting relationships based on the French case

The globalization of financial markets has required the use of common reporting standards, notably the IFRS. These are impacting the accounting systems of many countries. However, accounting systems are also often used for national tax reporting. This creates a divergence in the reporting needs which existing accounting systems are unable to meet and some amount of duplication is therefore required for tax reporting and financial reporting. Previous studies have talked about linkages between accounting and taxation and have found aspects of their systems identical, disconnected, accounting dominated or tax dominated, and that this mix changes over time, with a definite evolutionary model. This conceptual paper, grounded in French empirics, examines whether since the new IFRS, the existing theoretical evolutionary model is adequate, and finds that it is not. It then proposes an alternative integrated accounting system to satisfy simultaneously the financial and tax reporting requirements. The integrated accounting system should result in economies.     

Effects of Capital Gains Taxation on Life-Cycle Investment and Portfolio Management

We examine the impact of capital income taxation, both accrual forms of taxation and taxation of realized capital gains, on total savings and the demand for corporate financial instruments. We find that investors may hold both debt and equity in the face of effective collection of capital gains taxation even in a flat tax system. We also find that the two taxes will have substantially different effects on saving and consumption behavior, making it unlikely that the tax structure can be summarized by any single equivalent accrual tax rate.     

The yellow brick company: An instructional case for integrating the teaching of tax and managerial accounting

In recent years, the emphasis in accounting education has shifted from technical instruction to a broader understanding of the role of accounting in decision-making. One outgrowth of this new emphasis has been an integration of the accounting curriculum, whereby courses assimilate and explore the interrelationships among the various accounting subareas as well as with other disciplines. The aim of this instructional case is to help bridge the gap that typically exists between tax and management accounting teaching. Through the evaluation of three mutually exclusive alternatives, students are systematically introduced to the ways that implicit taxes, alternate tax structures, and the treatment of net operating losses (NOLs) can alter the relative profitability and risk of alternative courses of action. The case thereby helps students who do not take courses in taxation to appreciate that taxes are not simply payments to the government after the fact. Rather, they play an important and integral role in managerial decision-making.     

A Matter of Principle: Recent Developments in Hungarian Accounting Thought and Regulation

This paper provides, against a review of prior literature on the problems faced by economies in transition from plan to market, an analysis of developments in Hungarian accounting regulation during the past 15 years. Significant legislative events are examined, as well as gradually shifting attitudes of the key players involved in the regulatory processes. We identify a number of obstacles to the development of a regulatory framework suitable to provide decision-useful accounting information, among which the roles and attitudes of the legislator and the accounting profession feature prominently, as well as the lingering influence of taxation on accounting, and of other Continental European, code-law regulatory and accounting features. We conclude that a reduction of the influence of government and legislation is required, as well as a more progressive approach in the education and training of accountants. This should focus on the teaching of a new way of thinking and move away from the traditional teaching of detailed accounting methods.