About

This Module is a 3 year Summer School which is funded by European Commision, Erasmus +, Jean Monnet Program

This Module aims to introduce and analyze “Personal Income Tax in the European Union (henceforth PIT in the EU)”. It should be mentioned that PIT structure is not unified across the Europe. The tax structures adopted by different countries are significantly different, in terms of tax rates, allowances, and exemptions and so on (see e.g., Ernest and Young’s “Worldwide Personal Tax and Immigration Guide 2018-19”). Therefore, while Module covers general principle of taxation in the EU, including non-discrimination and escaping double taxation, recognizes existing differences among individual member countries of the EU

The framework of this Module is a Summer School which will be held at the Allameh Tabataba’i University, as a leading academic centre in Social and Human Science in Iran. Members of the team are academicians and practitioners who are expert in tax law and economics of taxation with valuable experiences in teaching and analysing tax systems both from universities located in Iran and some country members of the EU.

The audience of this module are students and practitioners with special interest in International Tax Law, Economics of Taxation and Public Policy, both from Iran and its neighbour countries including Afghanistan, Tajikistan, Kazakhstan and Iraq. We will invite junior researchers who are going to advance their academic careers, tax practitioners who are involved in income tax reform in their countries, and researchers who are going to understand EU angle into PIT and derive its implication for their countries, as well together with possible other stakeholders.

Delivering this Module is essential for several reasons. Firstly, because EU country members by and large run a relatively well functioning PIT system, in terms of both generating income for government and more outstandingly, redistributing income from riches to poor, to include more people in economic and social life and lets government to adopt first best policies in other economic arena. Of course, the caveat should be taken into account that income tax is not perfect across the EU countries and some observers do believe that some reforms are required to improve income distribution.  

Secondly, at the host institution and other academic institutions across the country, there is no teaching or research activity with special focus on the EU tax system and the way its country members design and implement PIT and employ it as an effective instrument to raise tax revenue and decrease inequality. Through running this Module for three years, we expect that our audiences define new courses such as “International Tax Law: EU perspective” or reconsider the syllabus of their existing courses such as “Public Finance”, or “Tax Law”.

Thirdly, while graduate students and researchers have a good knowledge of the legal and economic theory of the tax, to promote their research program or academic careers they are in great need to understand income tax in practice and recognize key points in analysing, designing and implementing an income tax system. For the being time, under the influence of seminal textbooks translated into Persian, most of the evidence is solely considering US and UK tax system and ignores other experiences including EU.  

Fourthly, understanding the structure and performance of PIT in the EU is vital for Iran, also for its neighbour countries; As a matter of fact, the shortcomings of their PIT structures are well recognized and the policy makers and academicians are discussing to promote a fundamental reform in the next few years. General principles are in effect in EU countries, the methods they define taxpayers and taxable income, and the ways they deal with tax compliance issues, among others, are of too much of importance to promote effective PIT reforms.