Taxation of Corporations and Shareholders

(3 Credit Hours) · Undergraduate

The use of the corporate form of operating a business is growing in popularity in the United States for both tax and non-tax reasons. This course provides an in-depth study of federal income tax laws as they are applied to corporations and shareholders. Topics to be examined include: definition of a corporation for tax purposes; the problems of forming a corporation, including the design of the corporation's capital structure; computation of the corporate tax liability for individual corporations and controlled groups of corporations; taxation of S corporations; penalty surtaxes (i.e., the personal holding company tax and the accumulated earnings tax) applicable to corporations; payment of non-liquidating distributions to the corporation's shareholders; tax consequences of liquidating the corporate entity and corporate reorganizations. Students will be required to complete both a Form 1120 and 1120S and, working in groups, write up solutions to tax research assignments and case studies. Course cannot be taken Pass/Fail.