COMPARING INTERNATIONAL TAX SYSTEMS IN THE INTRODUCTORY TAX CLASS

Given the increasingly global nature of the economy, the AICPA has included an international/global perspective among the broad business perspective competencies it considers essential for accounting professionals to develop (AICPA, Core Competency Framework (2005)). The AICPA explains that individuals entering the accounting profession should be able to identify and communicate the variety of threats and opportunities of doing business in a borderless world. The accounting professional of the future must provide services to support and facilitate commerce in the global marketplace. Further, the AICPA Model Tax Curriculum suggests that instructors could incorporate the international/global perspective from the core competencies into the learning objectives of typical introductory tax courses. However, given the limited time devoted to tax courses in most university curricula and the multitude of topics that can be covered in introductory tax courses, instructors may have difficulty devoting an entire module to international tax issues or incorporating in-depth cases dealing with international tax issues into their introductory courses. In response to this difficulty, this column presents an assignment that requires a more modest time commitment to bring international tax issues into the introductory tax course and to raise student awareness of differences in tax systems. The assignment requires students to research parts of another country's tax system to provide tax planning advice to a client who is considering taking a job overseas.