Assessing beginner tax preparers - creating an audit trail

I’m hoping to combine my two passions - teaching and accounting - into a beginners tax preparation course. Lately I’m increasingly aware of small business owners’ desire to be more in control of their relationship with CRA. I figure there has to be a middle ground between “just winging it” and paying an accountant.

I’m drawn to the concept of “just-in-time” learning, vs. “just-in-case” learning - whereby the learning is tailored to the immediate needs of the learners. In this case - to file their taxes.

Course name & Learners

The course would be “File your own small business taxes with confidence” and would be aimed at sole proprietors in Canada. The learners would likely be younger - 25 to 45 , reasonably tech savvy and with a desire to control and understand their business operations.

Objective - Module 1

After completing this module, students will be able to:

• successfully navigate the software required to prepare their own tax returns, including the filing of the return;

• prepare excel schedules to support their business activities in the event of an audit; and

• understand what documentation should be preserved in case of request by CRA.

Assessment strategy

Assessment for this module will be in three forms:

1) A short written response outlining the student’s choice in tax preparation software. There are many software to chose from, so the written response should address what are important features to the student, and why they have selected this software

2) A completed home office schedule, with supporting documents, and correct use of tapes

3) A quiz entitled “Keep or shred” in which students must determine if various documents need to be kept for future audit, or if they can be shredded

Rationale

The key objective of this course is that learners will be confident to file their own taxes when it is complete, so the rationale for the first two assessments would be that they directly contribute to the student being ready to file. The third is intended to be a bit more fun, low stakes.