Enhancing Functional and Other Competencies Through Role-Playing in an Entity Tax Course

This chapter describes a project used in an entity tax class to engage students in developing several competencies that are valued by academics and the professional accounting community. Instructors provide students with a single set of data from which to prepare tax returns based on three separate assumptions about the entity: it is (1) a partnership, (2) a C corporation, or (3) an S corporation. Instructors play the role of a tax supervisor in a professional firm and students play the role of junior tax professionals. The student must communicate with the instructor to obtain necessary information (beyond the facts listed in the project description) to complete the tax engagement. Completed manually at first, the project reinforces material learned in class, encourages professional communication, and deepens the students’ understanding of how the choice of entity affects business taxation. Once the manual preparation is completed, students prepare the same returns using a computerized tax preparation tool to enhance their learning with technology.