The IRS has a free tax preparation service for people who are low income, elderly, or disabled.  This free service is performed by volunteers.  Managers at a regional IRS office believe that not enough people in our local area are taking advantage of this free service, but they are not sure why.  They have asked if our school can help.  Information about this program can be found here:

http://www.irs.gov/newsroom/article/0,,id=107930,00.html

Answer the following questions in a maximum of five double-spaced pages:

1. In our initial consulting, what questions would need to be asked of managers who are running this program?

2. What additional questions would need to be answered with regard to the external environment?  What are sources of secondary data that could be used to find the answers?

3. After an initial assessment associated with the above issues, what kinds of primary data would we most likely want to collect first?

Limit your entire essay to five double-spaced typewritten pages (I won't read anything after page five).  Note that issues of spelling, punctuation, sentence structure, and such are important considerations at the MBA level.  Be sure to print your name at the top of your submission.

This is not a research project; you are being asked to advise on information collection, not to collect any information.  You should be able to answer this series of questions in the normal amount of time that is allotted to a single class period using only our class discussions and materials that have been used in this course.  Importantly, you are expected to base your essay on issues that have been discussed in class; "shooting from the hip" is likely to result in a failing grade.

The exam is due by 10:00 PM on Monday, 11 OCT.  You may e-mail as a word-processed attachment or submit personally.  Note that the doors to enter the building are often locked prior to closing.  If you e-mail, you will get a reply saying that the attachment has been received and successfully opened; send a reminder or call if you do not.  Send to:

robert(dot)owen(at)tamut(dot)edu

phone: 903-223-3010

Re. the breakeven project: Our client does not yet have any insurance information and I haven't had the time to research it.  Rather than take any guesses, I think that it is better to simply do an analysis without this factor.  That is, do the analysis without consideration for insurance, concluding with a note to indicate that insurance costs will impact any positive solutions that you have found.