Having fun while competing on a provincial stage
The Lang Tax Conference was an amazing opportunity for our team to combine creativity and research skills in a tax policy-based setting! This was our second year participating in the competition, so we had an idea of what to expect, but it was the first time we were able to prepare for the case and attend the conference in-person.
From left to right in the Lang Tax team pic (now graduated AFM): Bowen, Jane, Rebecca, and Baldwyn.
The case was designed to be very open-ended, a non-tactical taxation case, so we decided to meet up on campus one weekend and bounce ideas off each other. This was definitely the most enjoyable part of the process as we truly felt free to come up with creative tax policies that could potentially solve a real issue in Canada. Since all four of us were in 4B AFM, we often found ourselves discussing policies that directly implemented the concepts we were learning about or had previously learned in the School of Accounting and Finance’s tax courses. Being able to apply that knowledge to a “real-life” setting outside of our co-op work terms was eye-opening.
Once we finalized our recommendation, we put together a video presentation and recorded our proposal in between studying for midterms and completing assignments.
The four of us then travelled to Guelph together to attend the conference. One of the best parts of the day was getting to watch the top three case submissions. It was fascinating to see the variety of unique tax-policy solutions that students from other schools were able to come up with, but also very interesting that many of the submissions bore some similarities in terms of implementation. We really enjoyed getting to meet with students interested in tax from other schools.
Overall, our team was very happy to win second place in the conference, but even happier with the time we spent together preparing for the case and the people we were able to meet as a result.