South-Western Federal Taxation 2009: Individual Income Taxes (with TaxCut® Tax Preparation Software CD-ROM) (West's Federal Taxation: Individual Income Taxes) (Hardcover)

~ (Author), James E. Smith (Author), Eugene Willis (Author)
Key Phrases: tax determination, certain itemized deductions, recapture provisions, Cengage Learning, All Rights Reserved, Property Transactions (more...)

Editorial Reviews

Product Description

Preparing you for the long term, SOUTH-WESTERN FEDERAL TAXATION: INDIVIDUAL INCOME TAXES offers many opportunities to sharpen critical-thinking and writing skills. Internet exercises tie directly to chapter research cases to give you hands-on experience using online resources to solve tax issues. H&R Block's TaxCut® software comes with each new copy of this text to provide you with an additional tax preparation tool!

About the Author

William H. Hoffman, Jr., earned B.A. and J.D. degrees from the University of Michigan and M.B.A. and Ph.D. degrees from The University of Texas. He is a licensed CPA and attorney in Texas. His teaching experience includes: The University of Texas (1957-1961), Louisiana State University (1961-1967), and the University of Houston (1967-1999). Professor Hoffman has addressed many tax institutes and conferences and has published extensively in academic and professional journals. His articles appear in The Journal of Taxation, The Tax Adviser, Taxes--TheTax Magazine, The Journal of Accountancy, The Accounting Review, and Taxation for Accountants.

James E. Smith is the John S. Quinn Professor of Accounting at the College of William and Mary. He has been a member of the accounting faculty for over 30 years. He received his Ph.D. from the University of Arizona. Professor Smith has served as a discussion leader for Continuing Professional Education programs for the American Institute of Certified Public Accountants (AICPA), Federal Tax Workshops, and various state CPA societies. He has conducted programs in more than 40 states for about 25,000 CPAs. He has been the recipient of the AICPA's Outstanding Discussion Leader Award and the American Taxation Association/Arthur Andersen Teaching Innovation Award. Among his other awards are the Virginia Society of CPAs' Outstanding Accounting Educator Award and the James Madison University's Outstanding Accounting Educator Award. He was the president of the Administrators of Accounting Programs Group (AAPG) in 1991-1992. He was the faculty adviser for the William and Mary teams that received first place in the Andersen Tax Challenge in 1994, 1995, 1997, 2000, and 2001, and in the Deloitte Tax Case Study Competition in 2002, 2004, 2005, and 2006.

Eugene Willis is the Arthur Andersen Alumni Professor of Accountancy at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign. He joined the Illinois faculty in 1975 after receiving his Ph.D. from the University of Cincinnati. He has published articles in leading academic and professional journals, including The Accounting Review, The Journal of the American Taxation Association, The Journal of Accountancy, and The Journal of Taxation. Professor Willis is co-director of the National Tax Education Program, a continuing education program co-sponsored by the American Institute of CPAs and the University of Illinois.

Product Details

• Hardcover
• Publisher: South-Western College/West; 32 edition (April 8, 2008)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0324660200
• ISBN-13: 978-0324660203
• Product Dimensions: 10.9 x 8.5 x 1.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 4.8 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (11 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #44,559 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Horrible, horrible book, October 12, 2008

By	Eater of Books (USA) - See all my reviews

This books is a disservice to those trying to learn federal income tax. This is a book on tax law, not on how to prepare individual tax returns or to prepare for the CPA exam. In short, save your money and buy "Income Tax Fundamentals" by Whittenburg and Altus-Buller. For comparison, when discussing medical expense deductions, this book splits the dicussion into two chapters seven chapters apart and never states the formula. Income Tax Fundamentals has as the last sentence of the first paragraph "here's the formula to calculate".

Also in the South-Western book you will never see a 1040 or any of the supporting schedules because it is about tax LAW. In the Whittenburg book EVERY chapter shows you the forms and explains how to fill them out in detail and how to calculate the amounts because it is a tax ACCOUNTING textbook.

Here's brief list of issues I had with this book
- It is completely lacking in clarity because it never walks thr reader through how to do the tasks, it provides an illustrative situation, states the amount of tax owed and moves on. There is no step-by-step as to how the answer was derived or how you could do it yourself. This leaves you blindly mixing and matching numbers to try to figure out how to reproduce the result.
- the text frequently makes assertions in the examples that are not supported by the text leading to the example (in some cases, the example can be explained by information several pages later -- where the example SHOULD have occured
- it will provide lists of exceptions or rules, but then not explain what they mean. For instance when discussing Hobby Losses, the book states 9 rules to determine whether an activity is a hobby or a business, but doesn't inform the reader which would apply: "The expertise of the taxpayer" would that make it a hobby or a business? The book doesn't say. "The expectation that the assets will increase in value" Again, does that make it a hobby or a business?
- When discussing the restrictions on deductions for transactions between related parties, it covers Losses, Unpaid Expenses and Interest and THEN at the end defines what "related parties" means!
- It does next to nothing to inform the student HOW to do much of anything; it simply states what the rules are and moves on
- frequently it uses BUSINESS examples throughout the text instead of individual examples (this has lead to extreme confusion in the class over a test question where students, who had taken taxation of corporations, got the question wrong). Although many individual filers have private businesses, the book provides as an example whether "Blackbird Airlines" a non-private company can deduct the cost of its federally mandated engine tests!

It goes on like this for 800+ pages. It's unconscionable!

If this text is required in your class, write up a formal complaint to your school (I am documenting the flaws I have found and including page numbers), and during the class review share your thoughts on the text.

This book is a waste of time and trees!

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars South-Western Federal Taxation 2009: Individual Income Taxes, March 16, 2009

By	Egle - See all my reviews

Great book. Has a lot of detail, well-organized. Examples make it easier to understand the material.

1.0 out of 5 stars Did not receive the book at all., October 24, 2009

By	Inga Bendukidze - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

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