Five students from Ohio State will be traveling to Washington, D.C., Jan. 28 to compete in a national tax competition in front of one of the nation’s largest privately owned companies.

The “xTax competition” is sponsored by PricewaterhouseCoopers, the largest auditing firm in the country, and challenges students from schools nationwide on their ability to make real-world business decisions. This is the eighth year of the annual competition and the first year a team from OSU has made the finals. The winning team members were second-year students Rachel Rutledge, Ryan Daulton and Rebecca Reed, third-year Brad Rollins and fourth-year Konstantin Katsman.

“For me, this was huge,” said Reed, a student in accounting and finance. “I’ve never done anything like this before. The fact that we won was very powerful.”

PwC kicked off the event during Fall Quarter and various teams at each university began forming, prepared to solve a make believe tax problem. As long as they followed certain predetermined criteria, students could select their own roster and problem-solving approach. The teams met with local PwC representatives to receive an official case packet and had two weeks to develop an answer.

The case centered on the country of “Butan” and the health care issues at the imaginary firm “Butan Business Network.” Every participating group was responsible for giving a solution to adjusting the tax policy so the company could pay for their health care.

“At the end of the day, the judging was based on the quality of the solution and the quality of the presentation,” said David Lloyd, an audit partner at PwC’s Columbus office sent to judge the entries from OSU.

The winning team “was a unanimous choice,” he said. “Not only did they have a very good solution to the question, but they showed a lot of teamwork.”

Videos from each university’s winning team were sent to be judged nationally and narrowed to five finalists. Along with OSU, the four other teams in the national finals are from The University of Cincinnati, The University of Florida, Arizona State University and Baylor University. Each was awarded $10,000 and a trip to D.C. to present their case in person to PwC judges.

“We tried to create a health care system that put more power in the individuals themselves,” said Katsman, an accounting and finance major. “We wanted to see a transformation from the way it is, to a system where individuals care more about their own health.”

Although they will be presenting the same case in the finals, the team plans on making adjustments before competing next week.

“I think this group has a high level of maturity and communication skills and one of the most important thing to succeed will be communication,” Katsman said. “I believe the ability to act on the spot and help out your teammates is going to be most important in the finals.”

Since the inception of the competition in 2002, PwC has awarded over $1 million in total prize money. For more information, visit pwc.com/xtreme.