Overview

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Prepare a complete federal Form 1120 compliance package for a mid-size C-corporation with real-world complexity: a first-time Texas franchise tax filing and a $1.4 million fixed-asset addition requiring Section 179 and MACRS depreciation treatment. You'll work as the tax analyst assigned to Cascade Consumer Products, Inc. (CCP), moving from ERP data extraction through workpaper construction, Schedule M-1 reconciliation, state apportionment, tax provision, and pre-filing validation. Along the way, you'll build the five-tab workpaper architecture, apply the 20-item pre-filing checklist, and draft stakeholder communications — the same deliverables you'd produce in a real compliance engagement. By the end, you'll have one portfolio-ready artifact: a documented, audit-ready compliance package you can walk through in interviews and reference in your first tax role. Who this is for: You should have completed the prior courses in this program or have equivalent experience with federal corporate tax compliance, workpaper construction, and tax provision basics. This capstone assumes familiarity with Form 1120, Schedule M-1, and depreciation concepts.

Syllabus

Set Up the Engagement and Extract Source Data
- This capstone brings together every skill from the program — you'll work as a tax analyst assigned to CCP, preparing a complete compliance package from intake to submission. Every compliance engagement starts with structured intake and validated source data. You'll build the eight-folder audit-ready structure, create the five-tab workpaper shells in Excel, extract and validate the trial balance and fixed-asset detail, and identify open items that must be resolved before substantive analysis begins. Getting this right prevents rework downstream — every downstream computation depends on clean intake.
Build the Workpapers — Income, COGS, Depreciation, M-1, and Apportionment
- The bulk of capstone work happens here: constructing CCP's four federal workpapers. You'll map trial balance accounts to Form 1120 and Form 1125-A lines in Excel, compute Section 179 and MACRS depreciation for the Q4 warehouse expansion, reconcile book to tax via Schedule M-1, and calculate the Texas margin tax under all four allowable methods. These workpapers are the core of any compliance engagement — they're what a senior reviewer reads first.
Provision, Analytical Review, and Validation
- Workpapers aren't done until they're validated. You'll build the provision workpaper in Excel with current and deferred components, apply the eight validation types to every workpaper, and document explanations for any prior-year variance greater than 25%. Strong validation makes the package easier for a reviewer to sign off on — every documented check is a question the reviewer doesn't have to ask.
Final Package — Pre-Filing Checklist, Communications, and Submission
- Everything comes together here: final assembly, stakeholder communications, and submission. You'll apply the 20-item pre-filing checklist to CCP's full package, assemble the eight-folder structure with proper naming and version control, and draft a weekly status email, a pre-deadline check-in, and a traceability matrix in Excel linking each Form 1120 line to its workpaper. The package you submit is the portfolio artifact you'll walk through in interviews.