ACC565 Week 11 Discussion 1 and 2
Name
Course
University
6/12/2014
Discussion 1
"Learning Experience" Please respond to the following:
From the lessons and conceptual ideas presented in this course, determine the single most impactful or interesting lesson / concept you have learned. Provide a rationale for your response.
Assume you have the power to make reforms to the way tax research and planning is currently conducted. Propose the reforms you would make. Justify your response. On the whole, this was an interesting course for me and to single out one important thing for me in the course is difficult. I gained a lot from the concepts taught in this course and was happy to have availed to opportunity of taking this course at this time. The most interesting thing I found in this course was the topic of stock dividends and the stock rights. Stock dividends are an important part of any public company and I was surprised to know that the stock dividends were exempted from taxes as per this course. There is some limitation to this as it is applicable only in the case where the stockholder does not increase his share in the company and stays with the amount of shares he had bought at the earlier stages. Before taking this course, I never had known this nor had any other course focused on this thing in such detail. It refined my ideas about stock dividends and improved my understanding of it as well. It is true that all other course that I had taken taught me about dividends being taxed and I believed that it was not profitable to invest in dividends of any company as you have to pay the taxes which are a major expense on the income from the dividends that you will have. This course solved this query for me by telling me the exempted and taxable types of dividends. Not only was this, my concepts about taxable stocks and the distribution of their dividends also polished by this course. As I had talked about it before, all other courses I had taken prior to this course had confused me about the stocks and their taxation. I had the confusion of double taxation of stocks as well which made me think that stocks were useless things. However, in this course I learned that there are certain rules regarding taxable and nontaxable stocks.
Assume you have the power to make reforms to the way tax research and planning is currently conducted. Propose the reforms you would make. Justify your response
Having a look at the tax reforms shows that the last time they were amended was in 1990s. After that, almost three decades have passed without any improvement in it and no change has been seen. In my opinion, the first step in this process needs to be the decision about what tax base to choose for the new reforms (Brown & Purdy, 1939). To suggest a tax base, I will recommend using the consumed income as it shows the ability to consume of the people in general. The second step will be to make deductions in it to make sure the neutrality concept has been achieved. These may include charity for the wellbeing of the society. After this, I will decide the tax rate to make sure that it would provide ample funds to the government.
Reference
Brown, V., & Purdy, M. (1939). Tax laws (1st ed.). Lansing: F. DeKleine Co.
Discussion 2
"Application of Knowledge" Please respond to the following:
Identify the content from this course that you believe will be the most useful to you in the future. Provide at least one (1) specific example to support your response.
Speculate on the most significant changes you expect to see in the tax code over the next five (5) years. Explain your reasoning.
I found the entire course very benefiting for me in my academic career as well as in future for my professional life. it was very informative as well as challenging for me as I nerve had previously enjoyed studying any tax related course. The most important thing I noted after studying this course was that the tax laws taught in it were all about the
