You are able to understand and apply basic principles of personal and corporate income taxation from a government and taxpayer perspective.

You apply the leading policy principles relevant to personal income taxation to appraise foundational design features of income tax systems.

You explain and analyze possible approaches and rationales for the (non-)taxaton of miscellaneous items of income, by reference to the policy principles of tax law.

You form and express views on the arguments on the advantages and disadvantages of different legal approaches reflected in state practice to the design of the different key components of income tax systems.

This course provides a basic introduction to income taxation. In the first part of the course, we focus on foundational issues related to the legal nature and design of personal income tax systems. Through a comparative methodology, we reflect on different approaches to the taxation of personal income (from employment, entrepreneurship and investment) and other key elements in the architecture of personal income tax systems (e.g., tax rates, tax credits, and the determination of the taxpaying unit). In the second half of the course, we address fundamental issues related to the taxation of legal entities. In particular, we focus on the rationale for corporate income taxation, company financing and issues related to the determination of the corporate income tax base. This course will not focus on the tax system of any state(s) in particular, instead taking principle-based comparative law approach. The course dedicates special focus to terminological aspects. We establish foundational knowledge of tax-specific lexicon (e.g., tax base, tax rates, tax credits, etc.) and other key terms in the area of taxation (employment, business, dividends, interest, capital gains, etc.).

Provided via Canvas and the UM e-library

None

tax, personal income tax, corporate income taxation, tax base, income, tax accounting