Using Tableau to Analyze the Effects of Tax Code Changes: A Teaching Case for Tax and AIS Courses

This teaching case enables taxation and accounting information systems (AIS) students to use data analytics software to analyze a large dataset of simulated federal individual income tax returns to identify possible effects of tax changes on different categories of individual taxpayers. Tax return data provided for the case is a large sample that represents the population of U.S. tax returns filed, created from a simulation using distributions based on prevailing economic theories about income and most recent tax return filing statistics available from Internal Revenue Service (IRS) Statistics of Income (SOI). Students will learn to: (1) develop foundational skills and knowledge related to data analytics and how those skills can be used to visualize data to make it more meaningful, (2) demonstrate an understanding of Internal Revenue Code as it pertains to individual taxation, and (3) demonstrate knowledge of how Internal Revenue Code affects different types of filers.