On the weekend of November 9th, our team, Adam (AFM), Ash (AFM), Bhavna (Biotechnology/CPA), and Derek (CFM) took part in the Lang Tax Conference. This experience was one-of-a-kind, as not everyone in the group had prior tax knowledge or had completed co-op terms in tax. However, we were able to overcome these challenges and excelled in our presentation!
The case that we worked on was related to United Nations Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) eight: Decent Work and Economic Growth. Our task was to develop a tax policy that would allow Canada to address the objectives in this SDG goal. The case was released one week in advance and after careful consideration we decided to promote a Job Innovation Credit. This initiative would offer companies a tax credit based on the number of employees required and would only apply to industries that have a high unemployment rate. After my team was able to coordinate our wildly different university schedules, we submitted our case right before the deadline.
We made our way to Guelph on the morning of the conference and the venue was filled with eager participants in the competition who were also a little nervous. First, we had a CPA workshop that explained the art of networking, during which we were able to talk to some students from the University of Guelph. Through this session, we learned about U of G and how their program focuses heavily on case studies and other aspects of industry like management, marketing and their presentations. During the workshop, we completed our preliminary presentation and at the end of the day we learned that we were very close to making it to the top five teams!
The competition was intense with 21 teams from different business schools and we learned a lot about tax policy and what it means to be a CPA. The Lang Tax Conference allowed us to build long lasting relationships with all the people that we met.