From left, the winning team of Max Bolt, Hunter Brennen, Brittney Newer and Madeline
Engel hope to represent OSU at the national PwC Tax Challenge in Washington, D.C.,
in January.
Seven student teams participated in the PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) Challenge at
Oklahoma State University last Friday. The PwC Tax Challenge competition encourages
students to think creatively about accounting and tax concepts while working on their
research, teamwork, and communication skills.
Students are divided into diverse teams of four or five and have two weeks to examine
a hypothetical case, envision a solution, and then unveil a 12-minute presentation
to actual PwC executives. This year the assigned case involved the tax treatment of
virtual currency similar to bitcoin.
OSU’s winning team, Die Buchhalter, made up of Madeline Engel, Brittney Newer, Hunter
Brennan, and Max Bolt, will have a video of its presentation sent to the national
office of PwC for a chance to be one of five teams from across the nation earning
a trip to Washington, D.C., in January. Die Buchhalter members received cash prizes
for winning first place and every participant received an iTunes gift card for their
participation.
“We are pleased that PwC continues to engage with our students through the PwC Challenge.
We appreciate the opportunity this provides students to interact with each other and
experience accounting professionals while developing important critical thinking and
presentation skills,” said Robert Cornell, head of the School of Accounting at OSU.
“I couldn’t be more proud of all the teams participating. We had seven teams with
seven unique solutions. The judges really struggled in determining the winner this
year and that is a great problem to have. It shouldn’t be a surprise that we have
really outstanding students in the School of Accounting,” said Monika Turek, instructor
for taxation at the Spears School of Business.
“The challenge was a great chance to work with classmates on an interesting topic
and learn a lot. It was an awesome way to gain experience while competing against
other really tough competition,” said Brennan.
“Each team was organized and well prepared,” said Jade Walle, PwC Partner. “I was
most impressed however with how the teams seemed to gel so quickly, each of them exhibiting
tremendous teamwork and camaraderie as they delivered their high quality presentations
to our panel of PwC partners. I’m hopeful and confident that our winning OSU team
will be invited to compete, as one of five finalists, in our PwC national competition
in January 2015.”
