Reference no: EM131826831
1 OVERVIEW OF THE ASSIGNMENT
This assignment will test your skill to collect and analyse data to answer a specific business problem. It will also test your understanding and skill to use statistical methods to make inferences about business data and solve business problems, including constructing hypotheses, test them and interpret the findings.
In Australia, many people need to lodge a tax return after the end of the financial year. They can prepare and lodge their own return or pay a registered tax agent to do it for them. By using a subset of the sample file from the Australian Taxation Office (ATO), your task is to summarise and analyse several aspects of this lodgement method. We are interested to know the proportion of people who lodge a tax return using a tax agent; whether there is a difference among the age groups in terms of their lodgement method; whether there is a relationship between total income and the lodgement method; and the relationship between total income and deduction amount. In addition, you are also asked to collect and analyse a dataset about international students' preference of tax return lodgement method.
2 TASK DESCRIPTION: WRITTEN REPORT
There are two datasets involved in this assignment: Dataset 1 and Dataset 2, detailed below.
Dataset 1: You will receive an email that contains a dataset that is specifically allocated to you. This dataset is a subset of 2013-2014 individual sample file, provided by the ATO and has been edited to only include a subset of the cases and variables.
Data dictionary of the edited dataset is given in the following table.
|
Variable name
|
Description
|
Values
|
|
Gender
|
Gender (sex)
|
0 = males, 1 = females
|
|
age_range
|
Age in five years ranges
|
0 = 70 and over 1 = 65 to 69
2 = 60 to 64
3 = 55 to 59
4 = 50 to 54
5 = 45 to 49
6 = 40 to 44
7 = 35 to 39
8 = 30 to 34
9 = 25 to 29
10 = 20 to 24
11 = under 20
|
|
Lodgment_method
|
Lodgment method
|
A = Tax Agent
|
|
|
|
S = Self Preparer
|
|
Tot_inc_amt
|
Total income
|
All numeric
|
|
Tot_ded_amt
|
Total deductions
|
All numeric
|
Dataset 2: Collect data (e.g. via a survey) from international students about whether they would use a tax agent to lodge a tax return in the future. There is no requirement about sampling methods and sample size, but you need to justify your approaches in Section 1.
Both datasets should be saved in an Excel file (one file, separate worksheets). All data processing should be performed primarily in Excel or by using Statkey tool
Prepare a report in a document file (.doc or .docx) which includes all relevant tables and figures, using the following structure:
1. Section 1: Introduction
a. Give a brief introduction about the assignment, and include a short summary of a related article with a proper citation.
b. Dataset 1: Give a short description about this dataset. Is this primary or secondary data? What types of variable(s) is involved? Display the first 5 cases of your dataset.
c. Dataset 2: Explain how you collect the data and discuss whether your sample is biased. Is this primary or secondary data? What type of variable(s) is/are involved? You don't need to display your data in this section.
2. Section 2: Lodgement Method - Dataset 1
Use Dataset 1
a. Using suitable graphical displays, describe the variable lodgement method for Dataset 1.
b. Calculate a 95% confidence interval of the proportion of tax payers who lodge the tax return by using an Agent.
c. Give a short comment about your finding.
3. Section 3: Lodgement Method - Dataset 2
Use Dataset 2
a. Using suitable graphical displays, describe the variable lodgement method for Dataset 2.
b. Calculate a 95% confidence interval of the proportion of tax payers who lodge the tax return by using an Agent.
c. Compare this result with the result in Section 2 and make a comment whether there is a difference between dataset 1 and dataset 2 in terms of lodgement method.
4. Section 4: Lodgement Method and Age Group
Use Dataset 1
a. Describe the relationship between the age group and lodgement method using suitable graphical display and numerical summary.
b. Perform a suitable hypothesis test at a 5% level of significance to test whether the two variables are associated.
c. Give a short comment about your finding.
5. Section 5: Lodgement Method and Total Income Amount
Use Dataset 1
a. Describe the relationship between total income and lodgement method using suitable graphical display and numerical summary.
b. Provide a comment about your result in part a (include a comment about the shape of the distribution, centre, spread and outliers).
6. Section 6: Total Income Amount and Deduction Amount
a. Describe the relationship between total income and total deduction using suitable graphical display and numerical summary, for each type of lodgement method.
b. Provide a comment about your result in part a.
7. Section 7: Conclusion
a. What can you conclude from your findings in the previous sections?
b. Give a suggestion for further research
3 TASK DESCRIPTION: PRESENTATION/INTERVIEW
A presentation/interview for the assignment is scheduled on Week 11, in your allocated tutorial.
You do NOT need to prepare a presentation material (e.g. power-point slides), instead, you will be asked to demonstrate and/or explain how you summarised the data and how you performed the analysis. You may be asked to replicate what you have made in your written report (e.g. generate a chart or numerical summary using Excel or Statkey).