Building a Portfolio of Case Decisions to Teach Tax: An Illustration of Elaboration Using the Casualty Deduction Available to Purchase

Historical cases are developed from examples of real situations and companies and are valuable pedagogical tools in our classrooms. For the tax instructor, the challenge may not rest with writing and publishing cases, but in making choices among the available case histories in the legal records to provide a portfolio for case study. In this paper the author describes one method for tax instructors to select cases into case study. The method is helpful in teaching the details of tax algorithms. Applying this method, individual readings elaborate the details of the tax provision by providing interesting examples. These elaborations act as cues in the student's memory for the basic tax algorithm. The collection of readings helps students to understand the process of applying the complexity and ambiguity of tax law to the facts presented in daily life.