Take My Liberty ACCT 612 Class

ACCT 612 is less about tax rules than about finding them. The opening chapters describe the research process and the professional responsibilities of tax practice, including the AICPA standards for tax services and Treasury Circular 230.

Week two moves into the primary sources: the Internal Revenue Code, Treasury Regulations and the administrative rulings of the IRS, and how much weight each carries.

Week three covers judicial sources, the trial courts, the circuit courts of appeal and the Supreme Court, and the rule that the Tax Court follows the circuit where the taxpayer lives.

Week four covers secondary sources and citators, the tools that tell a researcher whether a case is still good law.

Weeks five and six continue with further chapters on research and its application, and week seven turns to tax practice and procedure: audits, appeals, statutes of limitation and penalties.

The last week closes with tax planning, comparing alternatives before a transaction rather than defending it afterward.

Liberty's library provides access to professional tax research services, and every memo depends on using them well.

Deadlines follow Liberty's course week, which opens on a Monday in week one and on Saturdays after that; the last falls at 11:59 p.m. Eastern on the closing Friday.

The four quizzes fall in weeks one, three, six and eight.

ACCT 612 is carried item by item, with something written due in every week of the term.

Essay 1 opens the course, two to three pages on a question from the opening chapters, often on the duties of a tax practitioner.

Each memo is written the way practitioners write them: the facts, the issue stated as a precise question, the conclusion, the analysis and the authorities, with the answer given before the reasoning.

Each memo's research runs through a professional tax service: Code section, then regulations, rulings and cases, with every case checked in a citator first.

In the problem sets, how each answer was found matters as much as the answer, so the route through the database is written out too.

Threads carry four citations, and each reply brings a source the classmate lacked.

The week-five essay argues a view on a doctrine like substance over form, citing cases.

The quizzes stay with you, and each memo's analysis is a good review for them.

You submit every memo, problem set and essay, and post every forum item yourself.

Research problems show the search path for each answer.

Memo fact patterns come from your instructor, so the research begins from the specific transaction your section is given rather than a textbook example.

Your work goes to a tax professional who researches for a living, usually a CPA in a firm's tax department, an enrolled agent who represents clients, or a tax attorney.

That matters because the memos are a professional format, and someone who writes them for real clients knows how short and exact they must be.

They use the same research services the course teaches, which makes the search path in each problem set accurate.

Many have handled IRS examinations and appeals, which shows in the procedure chapters and in Forum 4.

A second reviewer checks every memo for correct citations and sound reasoning before it reaches you.

The four memos come from one writer and share a format.

Your name stays with the coordinator, and the writer sees only the prompts.

Ahead of a quiz, a short note can explain a sticking point, such as why a private letter ruling protects only its requester.

The research itself is the first difficulty. Most accounting students have never searched a tax service, and the first memo is due in week two.

The memo format is the second. Students write memos like essays, burying the answer at the end, when a tax memo states the conclusion first.

Weighing authority is the third. A Tax Court decision, an appeals court decision from the taxpayer's circuit and a Supreme Court case do not carry the same weight, and memos that treat them equally lose points.

Citators are the fourth, since relying on a case that a later court reversed is a serious error in tax research.

The forums are the fifth, with four citations required in a thread of 400 to 500 words and two in each reply.

The essays look short at two to three pages but need a clear position and the requested citations.

Week five, with an essay and a forum, and week seven, with a forum and a problem set, are the crowded weeks.

Citator use is new to most students.

Arranging the course before it opens gives Essay 1 its full first week.

Forum 1 and Memo 1 reach you before week two closes, with replies after classmates post.

Memo 2 reaches you before the end of week three.

Forum 2 and Research Problems 1 reach you in week four.

Forum 3 and Essay 2 reach you in week five, and Memo 3 in week six.

Forum 4 and Research Problems 2 reach you in week seven, and Memo 4 before the final Friday.

Memos account for most of the cost; everything else is priced lower.

Join late, and the quote simply starts at whatever is next due.