Accounting Students Make Finals of National Competition For Second Straight Year

In January, the School of Business will send a team to compete in the finals of a national case competition sponsored by accounting firm PricewaterhouseCoopers. The national finals of the xTax Campus Competition will be held in Washington, D.C. The five-person team has already won $10,000 for making the finals.

The team had two weeks to prepare a presentation regarding some tax policy recommendations for a hypothetical country. At the first stage of the competition, UW-Madison teams competed for $1,000 in prize money. The six local teams were judged by PwC partners in Milwaukee. The winning team was then videotaped and the video sent to PwC’s national office, where the top five teams in the nation were selected. The five teams won $10,000 and a trip to the Washington National Tax Office of PricewaterhouseCoopers.

At the national office visit, the five winning teams repeat their presentations in person to a group of judges. Last year’s judges included a member of the Congressional Joint Committee on Taxation, a member of Internal Revenue Service chief counsel’s office, the national managing partner of the PwC tax practice, and two other PwC national partners.

In 2003, the UW-Madison School of Business team won the national competition and each member of the team received a silver Tiffany bowl (a small replica of the Alexander Hamilton Trophy, which sits in the PwC National Tax Practice office in DC). This year’s team hopes to repeat last year’s victory.

The 2004 team members' are: Ilana Bamberger, Dan Court, Amy Harstern, Corey Jones and Patrick Morrell. Associate Professor of Accounting Jon Davis and Al Talarczyk are the faculty advisors for the team.