An International Meeting of the American Accounting Association 2005 Annual Meeting August 7–10, 2005 San Francisco, California Come to the City by the Bay!

Effective Learning Strategies Forum
Wednesday, August 10, 2005

Session 4
Learning Effective Tax Research, Practice, Ethics, and Advocacy Writing, through the Systematic and Discrete Assignment of Tax Memoranda

Presenter:
Robert R. Oliva, University of Arkansas at Little Rock

Description:
Tax research courses emphasize the tools necessary to conduct tax research, with relatively limited exposure to practice, ethics, and advocacy writing. Unlike courses that expose students to mutually exclusive research assignments, this session suggests three (3) research assignments based on a universal set of facts raising penalties and ethical issues. The assignments will follow an exposure to effective advocacy writing based on the IRAC method, e.g., Issue, Rule, Application, and Conclusion; a discussion of the role and primary authorities from each of the three federal government branches; exposure to taxpayers and preparers' penalties; and discussion of the ethical guidelines promulgated in Circular 230 and the Tax Division of the AICPA.

At the conclusion of coverage of each federal branch, the session suggests that students submit an IRAC-based tax memorandum addressing the issues raised in the universal fact pattern through the use of authorities published by said branch. Thus, Memo #1 addresses the penalties and ethical issues based only on authorities from the Legislative branch; Memo #2 expands Memo #1 through the addition of authorities from the Executive Branch; and lastly, Memo #3, becomes a more realistic memo as it adds the effect of judicial interpretations to the previous mix.

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