Which Accounting Methods for Small Construction Contractors are Allowed for Tax Purposes? Which is Best? A Decision Heuristic Helps Choose

Many tax preparers still have difficulty determining and properly communicating the allowable tax accounting methods and bookkeeping procedures needed for small construction contractors, especially those having partially completed contracts at year-end. For many small construction contractors, the Internal Revenue Code is confusing and even court opinions give mixed signals as to which accounting method is permissible. This paper provides a discussion on the allowable methods of tax accounting and provides a decision heuristic to simplify the choice of allowable methods. The paper also offers suggestions about bookkeeping procedures

Chemistry students’ changing attitudes to online assessments

From 2019 onwards, there has been a significant shift in the digital assessment landscape, along with a shift from in-person, paper-based invigilated assessment, to online and remote assessment. This was, in part, a response to COVID-19, but e-assessment was being investigated and pursued by universities well before then. E-assessment can offer many advantages. It provides greater flexibility in assessment with students able to sit remotely and at various times. It allows greater automation with assessment software producing individual assessments with randomisations for each student, and catering for diverse needs with supportive software; reducing staff workload with automated marking and potentially saving money. More importantly, digital assessment has the potential to transform assessment into more authentic forms, including incorporating software used by real scientists into the assessment process (JISC, 2020). However, with this shift to digital, and especially remote assessment, questions are raised about the integrity of the assessment, and what other impacts remote assessment may have on students. To further complicate this issue the widespread access to generative artificial intelligence (GenAI) tools like Chat GPT raises questions regarding integrity and fairness of assessments, as well as what level of difficulty assessment tasks should incorporate to circumvent GenAI answers, or how to incorporate the use of GenAI in assessment tasks. Using an in-term, multiple choice test from a first-year general chemistry course as our study environment, we have tracked changes in how students perceive digital assessment from 2019 onwards, over the COVID pandemic, and with the arrival of Chat GPT and other GenAI tools. A total of 447 students were surveyed using either a paper-based survey handed out at the start of the test for those sitting in person, or an online survey accessed via a link presented after completion of the test for those sitting remotely. Our guiding research question was: How have student attitudes towards digital assessment changed with these significant world events; especially focusing on their confidence in university resources, and the integrity of assessment? We have previously reported on students losing confidence in university resources during the COVID-19 lockdowns, and students sitting remotely having concerns for the integrity of the assessment, believing it is easier to cheat in an exam, and being less likely to agree that the exam is secure against cheating. Now we investigate if the additional changes with the widespread availability of generative AI like ChatGPT further causes concern, or if the effects of ChatGPT are insignificant compared to the existing effects of remote exams. REFERENCES JISC (2020). The future of assessment: five principles, five targets for 2025, Retrieved from https://repository.jisc.ac.uk/7733/1/the-future-of-assessment-report.pd

An Avoidance Response Bioassay for Aquatic Pollutants

Avoidance response bioassays were conducted with eight aquatic contaminants, including cadmium, copper, mercury, zinc, chloroform, dioctyl phthalate (DOP), trisodium nitrilotriacetic acid (NTA), and phenol. Tests were performed in a dual-channel fluviarium system, and the toxicant injection procedure used provided good regulation of exposure concentrations. Juvenile stages of largemouth bass (Micropterus salmoides), bluegill sunfish (Lepomis macrochirus), and rainbow trout (Salmo gairdneri), and tadpoles of the American toad (Bufo americanus) proved to be suitable animals for evaluating avoidance or attraction responses. The trout was the most sensitive species tested. Avoidance was significant in tests with cadmium, phenol, and zinc, and significant attraction resulted from exposures to chloroform, COP, and mercury. Animals generally avoided lower concentrations of copper but were attracted to higher exposure levels. NTA produced variable responses. In tests With trout, threshold concentrations for avoidance or attraction were estimated to fall at 0.0002 mg/1 mercury, 0.047 mg/1 zinc, 0.052 mg/1 cadmium, 0.074 mg/1 copper, 11.9 mg/1 chloroform, and 56.6 mg/1 NTA. The threshold for phenol, determined using bluegill, was 39.0 mg/1. Results from fish embryo-larval toxicity tests were used to gauge sensitivity of the avoidance response bioassay. Toxicant concentrations which produced embryo-larval lethality or teratogenesis at frequencies of 10% (LC10) and 1% (LC1) were compared to behavioral threshold concentrations. The avoidance test was observed to be a less sensitive procedure for evaluating the effects of all the selected toxicants, except zinc. However, the behavioral test provided valuable information which was not obtainable using other bioassay methodologies

Equitability factors impacting attitudes relating to digital assessment

Over the past several years there has been a strong shift away from paper-based tertiary assessment and towards electronic assessment. While this process has been accelerated significantly by the COVID-19 pandemic, this shift was occurring well before then. Pedagogically, digital assessment offers many advantages over traditional paper-based assessment such as the possibility of remote delivery, easily implemented universal design to improve accessibility, and allowing more authentic assessment by incorporating the software already used on a day-to-day basis by students and professionals in the field (JISC, 2020). However, as with all significant changes, this raises the question of whether the shift to online assessment affects everyone equally, or if certain groups could be advantaged or disadvantaged by this change. This study surveyed students over a period of 4 years to ascertain how particular demographics feel about digital assessment, especially focusing on their confidence and comfort in taking assessments electronically compared to paper-based assessment, their use of computers and pen and paper for other tasks, as well as their feelings towards online assessments. The demographic groups used in this study were international versus domestic students, and gender identity. Here we present findings from this long-term study. REFERENCE JISC. (2020) The future of assessment: five principles, five targets for 2025, Retrieved from https://repository.jisc.ac.uk/7733/1/the-future-of-assessment-report.pd

College Quality and the Wages of Young Men

Using the rich data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth, we show that several dimensions of college quality have substantial positive impacts on young men’s wages. This finding is robust to a wide array of alternative specifications. Controlling for ability reveals that sorting of more able persons into better colleges accounts for only a modest portion of the unconditional quality effect. We find that young black men reap larger gains to quality than do young white men. Our results also indicate that attending a college with a racially diverse student body increases the later earnings of both white and black men

Bandwidth Selection and the Estimation of Treatment Effects with Unbalanced Data

This paper addresses the selection of smoothing parameters for estimating the average treatment effect on the treated using matching methods. Because precise estimation of the expected counterfactual is particularly important in regions containing the mass of the treated units, we define and implement weighted cross-validation approaches that improve over conventional methods by considering the location of the treated units in the selection of the smoothing parameters. We also implement a locally varying bandwidth method that uses larger bandwidths in areas where the mass of the treated units is located. A Monte Carlo study compares our proposed methods to the conventional unweighted method and to a related method inspired by Bergemann et al. (2005). The Monte Carlo analysis indicates efficiency gains from all methods that take account of the location of the treated units. We also apply all five methods to bandwidth selection in the context of the data from LaLonde\u27s (1986) study of the performance of non-experimental estimators using the experimental data from the National Supported Work (NSW) Demonstration program as a benchmark. Overall, both the Monte Carlo analysis and the empirical application show feasible precision gains for the weighted cross-validation and the locally varying bandwidth approaches