Shamen Dugger, Esq., CPA
President, Shamen Dugger, LLC
Shamen Dugger is a licensed California attorney and CPA with over 16 years of experience in corporate tax and accounting, as well as a published author in various renowned periodicals such as Journal of Accountancy, California Tax Lawyer, and BNA. Shamen spent most of her career working for “Big 4″ public accounting firms (PwC, Deloitte) ultimately being promoted to the Director level. Experiencing an affinity for tax provision related work, Shamen transferred to Clifton Douglas LLP (a small public accounting firm specializing in corporate tax compliance) to focus solely on corporate tax compliance as it relates to provision preparation and analyses.

During her years in public accounting, Shamen spent significant time instructing new staff and clients on new concepts and developments in various areas of corporate tax. It was during these training efforts that she observed two important training needs: 1) Regarding new staff, the need to accelerate learning curves in order to quickly close the gap between academia and practical application of real-world corporate tax compliance work and 2) Regarding clients, the need to accelerate learning curves for non-tax professionals that are required to understand corporate tax to fully execute their finance-related duties.

Shamen determined that the accelerated learning curves necessary for new staff and clients hinged upon “connecting the dots” to develop an improved corporate tax foundation that could be utilized to expedite understanding regardless of the complexity level. Although current training sessions were helpful, typically they were taught in isolation without reference to the “big picture,”" and in many cases the big picture itself had never been adequately explained.

Shamen’s corporate income tax training focus, therefore, is on teaching how to connect the dots (i.e., develop the big picture). This training begins with returning to basic accounting via recording journal entries of a company within the general ledger, organizing that data into the trial balance, and using the information to develop key financial statements in terms of the income statement and balance sheet. This source data is then evaluated for permanent and temporary book/tax differences and used to prepare six basic tax provision schedules (taxable income, deferred inventory, current/deferred tax expense, rate reconciliation, tax account rollforward, financial statements and income tax footnote impacts). The tax provision data is then used to identify what schedules will be required for income tax return filing purposes. Finally, the results of the analysis are summarized in a written client deliverable to assist in understanding the salient points relative to the tax provision/return preparation and improve professional writing/organization skills.

You have attended all the university and/or corporate in-house trainings on ASC 740 and tax provision preparation, but you continue to struggle in this area. I can show you a framework that helps accelerate ASC 740 comprehension. Even better, I can teach you how to utilize the framework to improve your corporate tax and accounting analytical skills, tax return understanding, and related written/verbal communication skills.