ACCT 307: Final Exam FAQs

Time and Location of exam?

7:10 pm on Monday, Dec 15th

RBC 184 auditorium

How long will we have for the exam?

3 hours, but the exam is designed to be 150 minutes, double the length of the midterms.

Which chapters?

Chapters 9 through 17, except 16. Note that the chapters will not have equal weights in the exam since certain chapters such as chapters 9 and 13 have a great deal of material vs the others, so those chapters will be closer to 50% due to their importance.

What do we need to know from chapters 1 through 8?

Chapters 12, 15 and 17 necessarily require some understanding of how individual taxation works from the earlier chapters in the course, ie the recapture provisions of chapter 11 that affect businesses that pass through to individuals would require knowledge of individual preferential rates, and the separately stated items of chapters 15 and 17, such as charitable contributions, investment interest expense, passive losses, capital gains and losses, casualty losses, passive income and losses, etc.

Will the questions be random or in order?

Unlike the CPA exam, our exam will be pretty much in order of the chapters.

Which exhibits are provided?

The tax rate tables for individuals and C Corps and the depreciation tables.

Any concepts dropped?

Listed below are the concepts that are definitely not going to be on the exam by chapter number and slide number and text page number.

Format of exam?

The exam will be comprised of all Multiple Choice questions - about 70 to 80 .

How Best to Study?

In terms of a studying approach: To reduce the need to memorize the book, we attempted for the majority of the exam to use only questions that can be answered from the slides, class discussions, and the examples referenced therein back to the textbook, and the homework. If you have time, of course study the textbook for any more clarification of the slides and homework to get an even better grade.

Will we have to memorize form numbers or complete actual tax forms?

No need to complete tax forms, but you should know which tax return type do the different forms of entities use to file their tax returns, e.g. C Corps use form 1120, partnerships use form 1065, S corps use 1120S, S elections are form 2553.

Specific Guidance by Chapter:

Chapter 9:

Unfortunately, there is not much we can cut out here since these are fundamental book to tax conversion items related to book vs tax accounting methods.

Chapter 10:

Note that you need to know the 2013 sec 179 dollar limits since the 2014 legislation is in limbo. See slides 33 to 35. Ignore bonus depreciation for the exam.

Slides 36 – 38 listed property ignored

We will provide the life of the assets, no need to memorize Exhibits 10-3, 4 and 9.

We will provide all depreciation tables.

Ignore slides 55-57 on depletion

Chapter 11:

Slides 39-45 on like kind exchanges: ignore for this exam

Slides 46 -47 on involuntary conversions: ignore for this exam

Chapter 12: this material should be the easiest since it was mostly covered in business law and, or in chapter 13 (C corps), 15 (partnerships) and 17 (S corps) .

Chapter 13:

Ignore Slides 52 and 53 on estimated payments

Slide 59 “ACE adjustment” ignore but just know (as per slide 58) that there is an AMT adjustment for 75% of difference between AMTI and ACE

Also ignore minimum tax credit slides 64 and 65

Chapter 14:

If needed, slides 5 and 6 “E&P computation” will be provided

Chapter 15:

Nothing ignored since these were high level slides to begin with

Chapter 17:

Slides 15 and 16 on AAA account