Audit education in the university accounting curriculum has not kept pace with the needs of new entrants to the auditing profession. This article describes an attempt at Brigham Young University to professionalize the auditing curriculum by expanding the typical one-semester auditing course to two required semester courses with an elective third course. The first course is basically conceptual, with emphasis upon the environment faced by auditors and an overview of the audit process. The second course is more procedural and emphasizes the development of audit skills. The third elective course pieces emphasis upon developing audit research skills. Learning objectives for the first two courses have been developed and are included in the appendix. Innovative audit education is needed to meet the challenges of auditing in the 1980s.

This paper describes the conduct and results of an empirical study of the differential impact of providing two competing municipal reporting formats: Fund-by-fund versus consolidated financial statements. The conflict between these two reporting formats was linked to the problems of data expansion and financial reporting for diversified entities. An experimental survey was conducted through the mail, using subjects chosen from membership lists of the Municipal Finance Officers Association. Subjects responded by providing an expected, high, and low interest rate estimate for each of the four cities whose financial reports they examined. The dependent variables of concern in the study were (1) the expected interest rates and (2) the interest rate range estimates (high-low). The statistical analysis of the subjects' responses showed that the kind of report presented to the participants (consolidated or fund-by-fund) had no significant impact on the dependent variables examined in the study at α =.05, but did significantly influence expected interest rates at the .10 level. Several implications of this study were offered as suggestions for further research. The limitations of this study were also discussed.

Much of the complexity of our federal income tax laws is due to the intricate treatment of gains and losses upon dispositions of property. Flow charts and examples are employed here to delineate the tax nucleus of this area. They can be used to increase the comprehension of students, the efficiency and effectiveness of services provided by tax professionals, and the quality of tax decisions by lawmakers.

Reviews the book "Federal Income Tax," by William O. Green and Ann H. Green.

Reviews the book "West's Federal Taxation: Individual Income Taxes," by Lawrence C. Phillips and William H. Hoffman.

The article presents a reply to authors John F. Kottas and Hon-Shiang Lau, on the appropriate size of samples in &chi 2 tests. The paper by FHN falls into the realm of accounting risk analysis. In risk analysis, it attempt to incorporate uncertainty into the decision process and, at the same time, try to make the analysis as simple as possible so that it can be understood by the manager and so that it can be done by those with elementary knowledge in statistics and mathematics. There is, therefore, a need in risk analysis to reduce intractible functions to reasonable approximations, preferably to the normal approximation as it is the most familiar and easiest distribution for the practitioner to use. In simulation experiments, the record has been that the choice of sample size was, for the most part, arbitrary. Better yet would be a choice based on the fulfillment of some important criteria of validity, for example, that the minimum expected frequency in a cell be no less than one in a chi-square goodness-of-fit test.