Admission requirements
Prospective students are recommended to have completed a minimum of one year of university education. Proficiency in English, both verbal and written, is expected.
Description
Context
In a global economy, cooperation across national borders is essential to tackle aggressive tax planning and secure fair and sustainable taxation. In this intensive 400-level course, students will draw on what they have learned elsewhere in the minor to study, critically reflect on, and gain hands-on experience of the ways in which tax policy is shaped through international negotiation and agreement.
Place within the minor ‘(Inter)national tax planning and policy’
This course is part of the advanced track of the minor ‘(Inter)national tax planning and policy’. The minor investigates the tax planning activities of individuals and companies and the policy responses of governments to address it. This course reveals how governments harness their power and influence through bilateral and multilateral negotiations and agreements on tax policy. As capstone of the minor, the course has a threefold purpose: it presents the latest developments in (inter)national tax governance, introduces students to the theory and practice of diplomacy in taxation, and facilitates critical reflection on the fairness of tax governance institutions.
Design of the course
Global tax governance involves the complex cooperation among states, international organizations, non-governmental organizations, and other actors, to regulate fiscal side of globalization.
The first part of the course provides an overview of the institutions and practices of global tax governance, highlighting new developments as well as tools to critically reflect on those developments. Global tax governance takes takes place through an extensive network of bilateral tax treaties but also through cooperation at supranational (EU) and intergovernmental levels (OECD, G20, UN). Drawing on the disciplines of international relations and political theory, the course will include an overview of these forms of governance: the challenges governments face in the area of taxation as the result of globalization (including aggressive tax planning by companies and individuals and tax competition between states), global institutions, structures and processes that have been developed to remedy these challenges, and normative theories used to assess these developments. A number of topical case studies will be examined in depth: this may include recent developments in the international cooperation on information exchange, proposals for the taxation of carbon emissions, or the attempts within the EU to agree on a standardized framework for corporate taxation across member states. The second part of the course will focus on the theory and practice of tax diplomacy. Students will be introduced to the theory of international diplomacy, learn essential negotiation skills and gain hands-on experience in a simulation of the conclusion of a multilateral agreement on taxation.
Course objectives
Upon completion of this course, students will be able to:
explain the core ideas of global tax governance and the key normative frameworks to assess it;
demonstrate familiarity with relevant case studies;
integrate the knowledge obtained in the other courses of the minor;
have developed foundational negotiation skills based on theoretical reflection;
communicate their substantiated views on the global tax governance and diplomacy both orally and in writing;
have strengthened their teamworking skills in a multidisciplinary environment.
Timetable
Zie MyTimetable.
Mode of instruction
Seminars
Number of (2 hour) instructions: 7
Names of instructors: dr.mr. L.C.J. van Apeldoorn and selected guest lecturers
Required preparation by students: required reading; preperation for simulation; participation during the seminars (mandatory).
Assessment method
Examination form(s)
Memorandum (15%)
Participation in negotiation simulation (15%)
Final paper of approximately 2500 words (70%)
The memorandum and participation in the negotiation simulation can be retaken together in the form of an essay (approximately 2000 words). The retake of the final essay either entails improving the previously submitted essay or submitting a new one; with the former option, a maximum grade of 6,0 can be obtained.
Partial grades obtained by students who fail to succesfully complete the course lapse after the current academic year.
Submission procedures
All written work must be submitted via Brightspace. Deadlines will be announced in the course syllabus on Brightspace at the beginning of the course.
Reading list
Obligatory course materials
Required reading will be announced on Brightspace.
Registration
Registration for courses and exams takes place via MyStudymap. If you do not have access to MyStudymap (guest students), look here (under the Law-tab) for more information on the registration procedure in your situation.
Contact
Coordinator: dr.mr. L.C.J. van Apeldoorn
Work address: Kamerlingh Onnes Building, room B2.16
Contact information via: Secretariat Department of Tax Law
Telephone number: +31 (0) 71 527 7840
Institution/division
Institute: Institute of Tax Law and Economics
Department: Tax Law
Room number secretary: Kamerlingh Onnes Building, B2.11
Opening hours: 9.00 – 17.00 hrs
Telephone number secretary: +31 (0) 71 527 7840