About Us
General Information
The University of Illinois Tax School provides high quality, low cost tax education to tax professionals. We are an accredited sponsor of CPE and award CPE credits to those who attend our seminars.
The two-day Fall Tax School is offered annually between mid-October and mid-December at various locations throughout Illinois. Over 6,000 participants in Illinois attend these Schools each year.
Topics taught vary from year to year, and include:
- Latest federal tax updates,
- Tax issues related to individuals,
- Small business issues,
- Regulatory ethics,
- Retirement,
- Special taxpayers,
- Recent tax law cases,
- Like-kind exchanges,
- Different tax entities,
- and other taxation topics of special interest to tax professionals.
The Federal Tax Workbook is a 700 page reference manual provided to registrants of the Fall Tax School. This workbook is also sold to other universities and associations offering similar tax seminars throughout the United States.
In-Depth Seminars are offered each summer and fall based upon requests from Fall Tax School participants. Typically, one of the seminars relates to a specific type of entity, such as closely-held corporations, LLCs, S corporations, partnerships or trusts. Another seminar addresses topics of interest to practitioners with farm clients. Occasionally, additional topics are offered addressing an area of taxation that is troublesome or complex like IRC §199.
In addition to offering the tax seminars, we also publish and sell our specialty workbooks, such as Limited Liability Companies: Electing Partnership vs. S Corporation Status and An Accountant's Guide to Like-Kind Exchanges. These are updated periodically in order to provide tax practitioners with the most up-to-date and accurate taxation information.
Sponsor
University of Illinois Department of Agricultural and Consumer Economics at Urbana-Champaign.
Tax School History
- 1940
First schools in DeKalb and Springfield. - 1940s
Enrollees mostly farmers doing their own returns. - 1950s
Enrollees include tax practitioners-IRS agents begin to help with instruction. - 1960s
Schools more oriented to tax practitioners; Workbooks and other references provided annually. - 1969
Illinois state income tax law enacted; State Department of Revenue joins program. - 1970s
Attendance grew from just under 2,000 to approximately 4,000 enrollees. Basic Income Tax Preparation telenet courses were offered for the first time. - 1980s
Attendance grew from 4,000 to over 5,300 enrollees. Number of schools offered grew to 26. An estimated 1 million federal and .75 million state tax returns were prepared by enrollees. Specialized seminars on S-Corporations and Small Business Issues were held. - 1990s
Attendance grew from approximately 5,400 to over 6,200 enrollees. The number of schools grew to 31. Satellite programs were introduced in 1994 and expanded to video-Telnet programs in 1997 and 1998, serving more than 1,700 participants. - 2000s
Attendance remains steady at approximately 6,000 participants. Summer seminars which cover in-depth participant-requested topics were initiated in 2001. The name of the program changed from Farm Income Tax School to University of Illinois Tax School in 2003. Webinars were introduced as a delivery method for instruction in 2008.
Modified: May 19, 2009