Objectives

This Module aims to achieve 3 alternative objectives:

Objective 1. Fosters the introduction of a European Union angle into mainly non EU related studies. Iran’s income tax system is a scheduler one which levy taxes at the source and treat different sources of income with different structures in terms of tax base, tax rates and unit of taxation. Some types of income are benefited from overall exemption, while the others are taxed progressively and the others proportionately. Taxpayers differences in terms of household dimensions and necessary expenditures are not taken into account when defining tax base and levy taxes. Thus, Iran’s PIT system is suffering from vital shortcomings and does not play its proper role in terms of redistributing income in society and generating tax revenue for government.

At the host country, therefore, reforming the PIT system is of high priority. To promote PIT reforms, understanding alternative designs and their performance are essential for both academicians and practitioners who are supposed to be the audiences of this Module.

To hit this objective, we identify unifying principles of PIT in EU as a whole and discuss it with our audiences and compare them with effective principles in the host country. Furthermore, details of PIT in the EU country members will be given a due scrutiny, and interesting questions will be raised to discuss with participants during the Summer School. In this way, we hope that we can introduce EU angle into designing, drafting and implementing PIT in non EU countries.

 

Objective 2. Fosters the publication and dissemination of the results of academic research. As mentioned above, while there is good deal of theoretical literature with regard Law and Economics of Taxation at the host country, nonetheless almost solely US and UK’s PIT systems are considered as benchmark and actually these two tax structures are given special attention.

In this Module, by categorizing and analysing the structure of PIT in the EU country members, we try to fill the abovementioned gap in several complementary ways. First, we prepare a booklet which covers courses materials in brief and explains EU PIT systems in a very simple way. In addition, we publish at least one peer reviewed paper to introduce PIT in the EU and derive its implication for tax reform in developing countries including Iran. Also, we encourage students to diversify their researches and delve into studies with respect to PIT in the EU, and we give them assistance to have their findings published. Through this accumulative process, we hope to contribute in promoting research publication and dissemination of academic research.

Objective 3. Promotes research and first teaching experience for young researchers and scholars and practitioners in European Union issues. For the being time, the EU perspective on PIT does not appear in regular courses’ syllabuses neither in Law schools nor in Economic Faculties in Iran. Furthermore, academicians and practitioners who are involved in the EU studies have not approached to EU from PIT point of view. This Module aims to provide new materials both to enable young scholars to either propose new courses or revise extensively their existing syllabuses, and to encourage EU experts to deepen their studies from this angle.