[Anonymous]

I’ve discovered a problem with Becker review materials. I am currently studying for REG using Becker 2013 Materials. Ive noticed the following:

1) Becker uses 2012 tax amounts, i.e., limitations for gift tax exclusion $13k in 2012 vs $14k in 2013. There are many examples of this, but i won’t list them all here.

2) Becker provides an update to their text that shows the incorrect limitation/tax amounts, and i went through and crossed out every delta in the book with the updated values.

3) While doing becker multiple choice, these questions/answers have not been updated. Therefore, you could potentially get a becker question wrong, even though you were right and vice versa.

Effectively, what you have to know here, is BOTH 2012 and 2013 amounts for exclusions/limitations, etc. This could make studying exponentially more challenging as you can see. My question is, is this a problem come exam day? What should i know? the 2012 tax amounts or the 2013 tax amounts? How have others who have passed/failed attempted to handle this? Thank you.

[barelystayingsane]

Becker starts distributing their textbooks for the upcoming year around October/November of the prior year. This means they don't always know what the tax law is going to be for the upcoming year at the time of printing, especially in the case of all the major tax law changes in 2013. This is not uncommon. This also does not mean that you have to know both 2012 and 2013 numbers. Yes, use the 2012 numbers for the Becker homework, but don't memorize them. Just make sure you know the concepts, so you can apply the 2013 numbers. You will need to know the 2013 numbers. The 2012 numbers are no longer tested. It's really not that big of a deal. There have been a number of threads started about this that you should search for. Those threads will tell you which numbers are important to know.

@Jeff, there have been a lot of threads started about this recently. Would it be helpful to sticky the “Changes in Regulation CPA July 1, 2013” thread?

[Author]

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