Residential MAcc Academics

BUAD 6129 | 4 credits

This course is designed to assist students in successfully integrating workplace issues into past and future academic education. Students will learn to use academically rigorous conceptual frameworks in analyzing and solving problems that arise in the field.

BUAD 6149 | 3 credits

This course will cover managerial accounting topics such as customer lifetime value estimation, cost of service delays, cost of quality analyses, time-driven Activity-Based-Costing, profit planning along the value chain, financial and operational forecasting, outsourcing, supplier choice and performance measurement, and analyses of profit drivers. This course replaces the Accounting for Business Strategies course, which met the cost credit requirement.

BUAD 6159 | 3 credits

This economics-based course provides a conceptual framework for understanding tax issues in the context of business decisions and business strategy. Students learn about how taxes relate to major decisions throughout the firm's life cycle: choice of organizational form, employee compensation, investment opportunities, international operations, and business combinations. The key conceptual components include (1) consideration of the tax implications for all parties to the transaction; (2) consideration of both explicit and implicit taxes, such as lower before-tax rates of return on tax-favored investments; and (3) consideration of both tax and non-tax costs. Although this course focuses on the current U.S. federal income tax system, ultimately, the course provides a useful framework for thinking about all tax regimes (i.e., across countries and over time).

BUAD 6169 | 3 credits

Following an introduction of the American legal system, Business Law will expose students to an in-depth look at contract law, commercial law, including the Uniform Commercial Code's Articles on Sales, Negotiable Instruments, Secured Transactions and Creditors Rights. Additional topics covered include bankruptcy, agency law, business organizations, including sole proprietorships, partnerships, LLC, and corporations.

BUAD 6189 | 3 credits

This course provides an introduction to the principles of estate and financial planning, with an emphasis on tax planning opportunities. Topics include a study of the estate and gift tax laws, effective use of trusts and life insurance, valuation techniques, integrated family tax and financial planning, succession planning for the closely-held business, and elections available to taxpayers. Also featured are debt management, retirement planning and investment planning, with an emphasis on issues facing both younger professionals as well as high net worth individuals.

BUAD 6209 | 3 credits

This course is designed to expose graduate business students to the financial accounting and auditing issues related to state and local governmental and not-for-profit organizations in the United States. Students will review the body of accounting and auditing literature, specifically related to organizations in the public sector. Due to time constraints, Federal government accounting will not be addressed.

BUAD 6229 | 3 credits

This course introduces students to the elements of financial statement analysis and increases students' ability to extract and use information from financial reports. While financial statements are prepared in accordance with specific accounting rules and principles, most of the numbers in financial statements are based on a set of assumptions and choices made by management. In this class, students learn how to identify and adjust for the effects of accounting choices on the comparability of reported earnings and other accounting performance measures across countries, across firms, and over time. Students also learn how to evaluate circumstances where accounting rules can cause disruptions in trends, making it difficult to forecast earnings and free cash flows. In addition, students learn techniques to identify earnings management, as well as assess whether the financial statements reflect the riskiness of the firm. Finally, because many large companies operate in a global environment, the class will examine problems created by differences in accounting standards across countries (e.g., U.S. Generally Accepted Accounting Principles versus International Financial Reporting Standards), as well as issues inherent in multinational companies such as how foreign currency affects financial statements.

BUAD 6249 | 3 credits

This course introduces programming tools and data analysis techniques from the analytics realm as they relate to the accounting profession. The course gives an overview of the questions and tools that accounting professionals encounter. With an emphasis on turning data into actionable knowledge, students will encounter a practical and hands-on introduction to commonly used programming tools.

BUAD 6279 | 3 credits

This course is an introduction to forensic accounting. Forensic accounting encompasses those services an accountant provides to assist a court or a client in settling a legal dispute and includes the following specialized knowledge and skills: 1) accounting, auditing, economics, finance, business law, quantitative methods, statistics, and tax; 2) investigative skills to collect, analyze, and evaluate evidential matter; and 3) written and oral communication skills. The content of this course will include 1) fraud and financial investigation services, 2) litigation consulting and expert witness services, and 3) computer forensics. To illustrate concepts, the class will discuss high-profile cases (e.g., investment frauds such as Madoff and financial statement frauds such as WorldCom, Enron, etc.). Guest speakers who possess specialized expertise may present on selected topics (e.g., fraud investigation, interviewing and interrogation techniques, cybercrime and digital forensics analysis, and the legal environment).

BUAD 6289 | 3 credits

Selected Problems in the Taxation of Mergers & Acquisitions. This advanced course focuses primarily on corporate transactions, and by using a series of examples, this course will explore different ways to structure both nontaxable and taxable combinations of business entities considering the tax goals and consequences of such transactions, and the role of the tax lawyer in representing a party to a business combination.

BUAD 6299 | 3 credits

This course is an introduction to the federal income tax treatment of partnerships, including LLCs treated as partnerships and their owners. Topics covered will include the tax classification of business entities as partnerships, partnership formations, allocations of partnership income and losses to partners, transfers of ownership interests by partners, distributions from partnerships to partners, terminations of partnerships, and a comparison of "S corporations" to partnerships.

BUAD 6359 | 1 credit

Students read and discuss current academic research papers presented by William & Mary faculty and external accounting researchers. This course is open to any student interested in how research informs business practices and is well-suited for students considering careers in academia. Attendance at research presentations is required. Topics change each year so this course may be repeated once for credit.

LAW 322 | 3 credits

The State and Local Taxation course considers taxation imposed by states and local governments in a variety of contexts, including the taxing of income, sales and use, property, and business licenses. This course will benefit students entering either a tax practice or a general business practice. Topics to be covered in the course will include the key elements of the major business taxes and individual state income tax; the constitutional restrictions applicable to the taxation of interstate businesses; the handling of audits; and the conduct of administrative and judicial appeals. The course will use Virginia's tax system as an illustrative model for issues that are common to most jurisdictions. Students will be evaluated on the basis of their class participation and on a series of written assignments, including administrative protests of hypothetical audit assessments and initial court pleadings.

LAW 438 | 3 credits

This course is an introduction to the federal income taxation of corporations and their shareholders. Topics covered will include the tax classification of business entities, incorporation and capital structure, taxable and non-taxable dividends, stock redemptions, corporate liquidations, corporate reorganizations, and an overview of "S corporations."