Abstract The objective of this study was to gather and analyze the views of tax educators and practitioners regarding various tax education issues for undergraduate accounting programs. Three respondent groups were identified and randomly sampled: tax professors, sole-practitioner CPAs, and CPA firm partners (primarily audit partners). The questionnaire attempted to determine what respondents thought an undergraduate accounting major would need—in terms of tax education—to perform effectively as an entry-level auditor/accountant in a public accounting position. Results indicate a general consensus that typical accounting graduates are, at best, marginally prepared. The two practitioner groups were fairly homogeneous, and different from the tax educator group, in terms of their recommendations for number of required tax courses and relative time devoted to specific topics in each recommended course, as well as how the recommended courses should be taught. The paper concludes with a statement of suggested implications, principal limitations, and future research directions.
Schwartz et al. (Sun,) studied this question.