D362 Corporate Finance, catalog number FINC 3100, is a three-CU course whose catalog description is narrower than its title suggests: it covers the common business structures and the factors owners weigh when choosing between them. Sole proprietorship, partnership, limited liability company, corporation, and the trade-offs in liability, taxation, control, continuity and access to capital that make one of them right for a given owner. It is a decision course, and the decision is which legal form a business should take.
Five trade-offs, and every structure prices them differently
There is no best business structure, which is why this is a course rather than a table. Each form is a different bundle of five trade-offs, and an owner's circumstances decide which bundle fits.
Liability. Whether the owner's personal assets stand behind the business debts. This is usually the first question a nervous founder asks and the one that eliminates the simplest structures for anything risky.
Taxation. Whether income is taxed once at the owner level or twice, at the entity and again on distribution. The tax answer frequently overturns a preference formed on liability grounds alone.
Control. Who decides. Sole ownership buys total control at the price of total exposure; bringing in investors buys capital at the price of shared governance.
Continuity. Whether the business survives the departure or death of an owner. This one gets overlooked by students and is exactly what a family business owner cares about most.
Access to capital. How the structure raises money. Some forms can sell ownership interests to many investors; others can only borrow, which caps growth long before ambition does.
Every scenario in this course is a set of facts about an owner: their risk tolerance, their tax position, their growth intentions, their partners. The competency is matching facts to trade-offs, not reciting the forms.
Planning a comparison document from the aspects
Each rubric aspect in your Course of Study is scored on its own and needs a 2. Comparison tasks have a specific hazard: it is easy to describe every option thoroughly and never actually compare them, which leaves the comparison aspect unmet while every descriptive aspect passes.
Worked example for a comparison task. Suppose your rubric lists four scored aspects and the directions ask for roughly 1,700 words. Reserve 140 for the client situation, leaving 1,560, or 390 per aspect. Here is the adjustment that matters: if one aspect is descriptive and three are analytical, do not spend 390 describing. Cut the descriptive aspect to 260 by putting the structural features in a table, and redistribute the 130 saved across the analytical aspects so they reach about 433 each.
Tables are the right tool for structural comparison and the wrong tool for recommendation. Put the features side by side in a grid, then argue in prose about which column wins for this owner and why. That division of labour is what separates a document that compares from a document that lists.
The entity comparison memo
Where the deliverable asks you to advise an owner on structure, this layout keeps the analysis honest. Your task directions take precedence if they set their own.
| Section | Content | What earns the aspect |
|---|---|---|
| Owner profile | Risk exposure, capital needs, partners, growth horizon, tax position | Facts drawn from the scenario, not assumed, since every later judgment rests on them |
| Structure comparison grid | Each candidate form against liability, taxation, control, continuity and capital access | Completeness across both dimensions, with no blank cells |
| Liability analysis | What personal exposure looks like under each candidate for this owner's activity | Applying the general rule to the specific business, not restating it |
| Tax analysis | Single versus double taxation, and the effect on the owner's take-home position | Showing the arithmetic at least once rather than asserting which is cheaper |
| Governance and continuity | Decision rights, transfer of ownership, survival of the entity | Naming the mechanism, such as a buy-sell arrangement, rather than the concept alone |
| Capital strategy | How the recommended form funds the growth described in the scenario | Connecting structure to the owner's stated ambition |
| Recommendation | The chosen structure, the runner-up, and the fact that would flip the choice | Committing, and showing what would change the answer |
The runner-up line is the professional touch. Advising an owner without acknowledging the second-best option makes the recommendation look like a preference rather than a comparison, and comparison is what the course assesses.
Supporting a structural recommendation
Evidence in this course is a blend of legal characteristics, tax consequences and financial reasoning, and each carries its own care.
- State the general characteristic, then apply it to the scenario. Limited liability protects personal assets in general; what matters is what it protects for this owner given this activity.
- Show the tax comparison numerically at least once, even with simple assumed figures, because a reader cannot weigh a trade-off described only in words.
- Note state variation. Entity rules and their formalities differ by jurisdiction, and an answer that assumes uniformity is overreaching.
- Cite course material and any external source in APA, paraphrased rather than quoted, since WGU checks submissions for similarity.
- Flag anything that would require professional advice in practice. Recommending a structure in coursework is analysis, not legal or tax advice, and saying so is accurate rather than weak.
Assumptions carry a lot of weight in this kind of analysis, because the right answer changes when the owner's tax bracket or growth plan changes. List the assumptions you relied on at the end, and the recommendation becomes conditional in exactly the way real advice is.
Formation and ongoing cost is the factor students leave out most often, and it is genuinely decisive for small ventures. Some structures can be started with almost no paperwork and no separate filing, while others require formation documents, registered agents, annual reports, separate returns and a discipline about keeping business and personal money apart. For an owner turning over modest revenue, the administrative burden of the theoretically superior structure can outweigh its benefits for several years. Naming that burden and putting a rough annual cost on it turns an abstract comparison into advice somebody could act on.
What Competent means on a structural analysis
Aspects are judged independently against the competency standard, and the standard here is whether an owner could act on your document.
- All five trade-offs appear for every candidate structure, with none silently dropped.
- The tax discussion distinguishes entity-level taxation from owner-level taxation explicitly.
- The liability discussion addresses the owner's actual exposure rather than a generic description of the doctrine.
- A recommendation is made, not merely a summary of options.
- The conditions under which the recommendation would change are stated.
WGU records Competent or Not Competent, with no letter grade and no ordinary grade point average, and performance assessment work can be revised and resubmitted without penalty. That makes a return a queue-time cost inside a six-month flat-rate term, which is the only real constraint on how many courses you close. If your version of the course ends in a proctored objective assessment, we prepare only: structure comparison drills, tax treatment practice and a readiness verdict. We never sit an assessment and never ask for portal credentials.
Five mistakes on structure comparison tasks
- Describing without comparing. Four thorough descriptions in sequence do not answer a comparison aspect.
- Deciding on liability alone. It is the loudest factor and rarely the only one that matters to the owner in the scenario.
- Ignoring continuity. Succession and transferability decide the answer in family and closely held businesses, and students skip it most often.
- Asserting a tax outcome with no arithmetic. One worked comparison, even on assumed figures, does more than three paragraphs of description.
- Refusing to recommend. Presenting options and letting the reader choose is the most common way to leave the recommendation aspect unmet.
How we work a structure decision with you
Send the scenario, the rubric and the directions. The draft returns with the owner profile drawn from the facts, a complete comparison grid, prose analysis on each trade-off applied to this owner, a worked tax comparison and a recommendation with its runner-up and its conditions. The walkthrough covers how each fact in the scenario pushed the answer, so the reasoning is yours to defend.
This course sits at the front of the finance sequence, ahead of D364 Financial Management I and the courses that follow. The structural literacy it builds shows up again whenever a later course asks how a firm raises capital, because the form of the business decides which doors are open.
Questions students ask about D362
Is D362 the same course as FINC 3100?
Why does a corporate finance course cover business structures?
Do I need this before the financial management courses?
Entity comparison memo due?
Send the owner scenario and the rubric. You get a full comparison grid plus prose analysis that actually commits to a recommendation.
Where D362 sits in WGU's programs
The July 2026 catalog places this code in 1 current WGU program. Open a program page for the complete standard path and term positions. The live Degree Plan remains authoritative after transfer credit, substitutions, and mentor planning.
The assessments, one by one
The public catalog does not publish this course's PA/OA identity or task count. WGU Tutors publishes at most one PA manual per course and only from a WGU-controlled public rubric. Until that source exists, PA help begins from the student's real Course of Study and OA support remains preparation only.