REG Study Group – Q2 2018 - Page 6

I'm also using Becker.

Recked who scored a 96 in REG should give us tips!

Here’s a list of My To-Do’s for REG in May:
1. Focus on tax and master 1040 front & back and be familiar with each schedule and sub-form that goes along with it.
2. Read the whole Becker book at my own pace while making my own notes for my final review.
3. Complete practice skills, MCQs, SIMs, and Mock Exam #1 & 2. (Aiming to finish 99% of my Becker software)
4. Take a bath on the morning of the actual test date, have a great breakfast, and head out to Prometric to test.

I am going to retake REG on this Monday. Last time I ve got 73, being comparable on all topic including SIMS except Entity Taxation- WEAKER. My advice to everybody. TAX FIRST! MASTER TAX! Then Ethics. Only after start BLAW. My friend passed with 78 – did not even open blaw – was reading short notes from becker twice. But he knew TAX! Do all sims in tax. M1 schedule a MUST! MACRS depr- A MUST! Basis calculation- a MUST! If I would upload my short notes on Blaw, i would do it, but I don't know how to do it here. About BLAW- study only BASICS, do not go too deep. They ask easy questions. Master ENTITY… I failed being weaker only on it and so upset as on June 30 I will loose BEC credit… 🙁

Hi Guys,

I'm not sure if you guys have taken the AICPA sample exam yet on the AICPA website. But there is a simulation in there (Teslet 3 SIM 1). The SIM is basically about a distribution of property by an S corp to it's share holders. There is a lot of information to put it in here but basically I'm struggling to see how the shareholder that got cash of $700k for the fair value of the property got a taxable gain of $50k when that shareholder did not take the property but rather took cash equal to the FV of the property. The other shareholder got taxed $50k as well. That shareholder received the actual property. The overall gain by the corporation on the distribution was $100k. It would make sense to split the gain across the shareholders 50/50 however the property was taken by one shareholder only and the other got cash for the property. The actual gain that happened for the corporation was $100k is for the adjusted based for half of the property being $600k and the FV being $700k and hence a $100k gain , I don't understand why the other share holder that only got cash will get taxed on the $50k. I know it's a bit vague to discuss the case here if you haven't' done the SIM but if someone has done the SIM will be able to follow my question. Wish I could discuss this live with someone.

@mskcle- Thanks for this. Yep that makes sense to allocate the gain based on what the S Corp's gain is.

Lnags- Thanks for the report! This is what i was hoping to hear about the exam.

Tom Lewis, an individual taxpayer who is a CPA, performs volunteer accounting work for the local Red Cross throughout the year. Tom's adjusted gross income for the year is $80,000. He incurs the following expenses for the year:

Transportation expenses to and from the Red Cross $ 200
Estimated value of accounting services performed 3,000
How much of these expenses may Tom deduct as a charitable donation on his Schedule A (itemized deduction) form (assuming that he can fully itemize and deduct all such expenses)?

$0

$200

$3,000

$3,200

I thought if you were a nurse or accountant (specialty) you could deduct your services?

@mskcle I took REG this morning and the new software is great! I totally get your frustration. I was worried about it because Becker on my laptop was making me scroll horizontally and because you can't resize the question itself it was really annoying to read. However, all prometric test sites have new monitors now that are really big and it turned out the new software was much better there. So overall I think it was much better than the old software especially for the SIMs (I didn't even open excel though, so I can't speak to that).

My exam experience sounds pretty similar Lnags– I've already passed FAR and AUD and thought I knew what to expect difficulty wise, but the SIMs on REG today were a total mixed bag. One was so hard I barely had a frame of reference, it came from a single page of Becker that was mentioned for less than 5 minutes (fingers crossed it was a pretest). But others were super straight forward and exactly what I was expecting. I walked out of it not knowing what to think- there were some MCQs and SIMs I knew immediately and others I had no clue even though I've studied Becker for 9 weeks for this section. Just praying to the CPA gods for a 75 and waiting for June 27!