Advanced Certificate of Achievement

Tax

Open to Full-Time MS Accounting Students 

(Internship and Non-Internship Track)

This certificate gives students the opportunity to develop the tools required to identify, understand, and evaluate tax planning opportunities, as well as develop a framework for understanding how taxes affect profitability and cash flow implications of business decisions. More than just an introduction to the U.S. federal tax system, the curriculum focuses on the specifics of the federal tax code and provides an overview of individual income taxes as well as partnership, corporate, gift, and estate taxes.
 

Specialize in Tax.

This Advanced Certificate of Achievement provides a competence in US Taxation and Regulation Accounting and Strategy.

To earn it, an MS Accounting student must complete 7.5 credits. Students are required to take the following courses (each worth 2.5 credits):

ACC 418

Taxes and Business Strategy (2.5 Credits)

ACC 418

The goal of this course is to help students develop the tools required to identify, understand and evaluate tax-planning opportunities, develop a framework for understanding how taxes affect profitability and cash flow implications of business decisions, and develop the data gathering, mathematical and modeling skills needed to maximize the after-tax economic effects of those business decisions. Optimal strategic decision making requires that the often-significant tax consequences of strategic alternatives are effectively and explicitly account¬ed for. Ignoring the tax consequences of decisions will lead to suboptimal outcomes for the firm’s stakeholders. Effective tax planning (e.g., the integration of taxation impacts on strategic decisions) requires the planner to: 

  • Be able to identify and gather the relevant data to appropriately analyze and evaluate the tax implications of a proposed transaction for all parties to the transaction 
  • Consider not only explicit taxes (tax dollars paid directly to taxing authorities), but also implicit taxes (taxes paid indirectly in the form of lower before-tax rates of return on tax-favored investments)
  • Recognize that taxes represent only one among many business costs: in the planning process, all costs must be considered, including the costly restructuring of the business necessary to implement some tax plans 

While the course will introduce key tax rules and laws in areas where taxes typically play a large role in strategic alternatives, memorizing detailed tax laws and becoming a tax specialist is not a goal of the course. Tax rules and laws change over time and from jurisdiction to jurisdiction. Rather, it is a goal of this course to provide future managers with an analytical, mathematical, modeling and conceptual framework to incorporate tax rules into the strategic decision making process, regardless of the particular tax laws in effect at any given point in time or in any particular taxing jurisdiction. 
After establishing a fundamental tax planning framework using the themes referenced above, the learning objectives of this course are, using differential equations, present value concepts and modeling software, to operationalize the established conceptual framework to real-life business decisions such as: 
Alternative investment opportunities 

  • Capital structure 
  • Compensation planning 
  • Organizational form 
  • Asset pricing 
  • Tax arbitrage 
  • Mergers and acquisitions 
  • Maximizing value of tax attributes 
  • International tax planning for multinational ventures

 

Prerequisites: ACC 401 and FIN 402

ACC 437

Basic Federal Income Tax Accounting (2.5 Credits)

ACC 437

This course will introduce the federal tax system in the United States and will focus on specifics of federal tax code. It will provide an overview of individual income taxes. Detailed topics will include, but are not limited to, gross income, deductions for adjusted gross income, deductions from adjusted gross income, taxable income, recognition of gains and losses. Skills will be developed to research the tax issues and determine the proper reporting.

 

Prerequisite: ACC401 or equivalent

ACC 440

Basic Income Tax-Business Entities and Gift/Estate Taxes (2.5 Credits)

ACC 440

This course will introduce the federal tax system in the United States and will focus on specifics of federal tax code. It will provide an overview of partnership, corporate, gift and estate taxes. Detailed topics will include, but are not limited to, gross income, taxable income, recognition of gains and losses, transactions between partners, Subchapter S Corporations, gift tax and estate tax. Skills will be developed to research the tax issues and determine the proper reporting.

 

Prerequisite: ACC401 or equivalent

Benefits 

•    Receive a Certificate of Achievement in Tax
•    Class credits count toward certificate and degree
•    Optional benefit with no additional time to complete*
•    Maintains STEM designation
•    Signals expertise and career focus to corporate recruiters
 

*Students can only count credits from a master’s degree toward one advanced certificate of achievement. More than one advanced certificate during a master’s degree requires additional credits; accordingly, the student may incur additional costs.