• 3 credits

• required course for international concentration

• no prerequisites but beginners should generally take international tax and tax treaties first.

Instructor:

William H Byrnes, IV, Esq.; LL.M. (European Tax); Fellow (Int’l Tax)

Associate Professor,

Director, LLM program

office : +1 305 668-3260

mobile: +1 786 271 5202

email: wbyrnes@stu.edu

Graduate Tax program

Professor William H Byrnes, IV, Esq is the director of the distance learning tax LLM at St Thomas University School of Law (Miami), and before accepting his previous associate professorship of law in the US, was formerly an associate director of international taxation at Coopers & Lybrand, South Africa (now PricewaterhouseCoopers).

Program history

In 1993 with the support of the Tax Academy of the IBFD and the Law faculty at the University of Amsterdam, Professor Byrnes outlined the curriculum of the tax program as well as the drafting and collection process for its materials. Professor Byrnes first taught the tax program residentially in 1994 (in South Africa).  Students from that original year have now become instructors in the program, such as Kithsri DeSilva of the New Zealand Revenue Service and Basil Newton of PricewaterhouseCoopers.  Also, the original instructors, such as Daan Ribbens and Roy Rohatgi continue teaching courses in the program today.  

Professor Byrnes created the present online program in 1996 with the support of Walters Kluwer Academic Publishers.  The American Bar Association first acquiesced to the program's United States online delivery in 1998.  In 2000, the program found its permanent home at St Thomas University School of Law in Miami.

16400 NW 32nd Avenue
Miami, FL

Technology issues:

v      Blackboard – email or call your (local) Lexis numbers

v      Proxy service – problem getting the proxy service to work with your computer- email or call the OIT office (helpdesk@stu.edu);

v      Problem accessing a database, email or call the law library, and if that does not work, then the Head Librarian Professor Gordon Russell (grussell@stu.edu).

v      Forgot your Westlaw or Lexis password: email taxadmin@stu.edu 

v      Problem accessing Westlaw, Lexis, other database – you need to contact the database provider directly with your password and student id number.

If all else fails, then I am the acting 24/7/365 support, so call me on my cell phone.

COURSE DATES

academic calendar

Course Start Date: February 7,  2005

End date: May 29, 2005.

calendar for Spring 2005courses

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COURSE DESCRIPTION

This course is the most interesting of all the courses in the program).  Most reliable sources (IRS, Scotland Yard, IMF, World Bank, OECD, etc) report that at least 5 trillion US dollars flows through and is managed by firms in offshore financial centers.  That 5 trillion dollars represents approximately half the world’s money supply.  Talking about providing services to a 5 trillion dollar market place with little or at best fragmented information will always be interesting.

In OFCs, we examine the principles of offshore financial centers.  I will provide an in-depth comparative analysis of some of the best known offshore jurisdictions from the viewpoint of the planner and the client.  You will also learn the many effective uses of offshore legal structures. The topics include: offshore structures; planning techniques [e.g., finance, licensing agreements]; comparative regional and jurisdictional analysis [e.g., which jurisdiction to use for a particular goal]; multinational offshore operations [e.g., treasury management]; offshore vehicle strategy such an re-insurance and private banking; maintaining an active offshore database and other similar topics.

In this course, we examine the law and regulation of many offshore financial centers, as well as planning with offshore centers.  I will provide an in-depth comparative analysis of some of the most known offshore jurisdictions from the viewpoint of the planner and of the Revenue Department.

The balancing act of my course on Offshore Financial Centers are the two courses: International Anti-Avoidance (taught by Kithsri “Lucky” DeSilva of the New Zealand Revenue) and Anti-Money Laundering (taught by Professor Bob Munro of the University of Florida College of Law Center for International Financial Crimes).

COURSE GRADE: PARTICIPATION, ASSIGNMENTS, FINAL EXAM

1. Weekly discussion board participation = 20%

How do you pick up discussion board participation?  You should make at least 20 substantive comments in the classroom, be the comments short or long, in response to either your colleagues or the faculty.   Think of it this way: - each comment is worth one point, thus 20 substantial comments will capture the required 20 points.

Answering the questions posed in the materials qualifies as substantial comments.

2. One class presentation = 20% (due date March 28^th)

Each of you will create a study guide style class presentation of three-pages that must include hyperlinks.  The presentation topic must be a planning technique for any jurisdiction, approved by me.  YOU must identify your own topic.  You may look through recent Revenue rulings and cases for topics.  One of your classmates, as I direct, will critique your presentation from the perspective of a Revenue Authority.  This presentation and response will be put directly into the classroom and ALSO emailed directly to me (to be filed).

I will put an example in the classroom so that you are not flying blind.

I will choose five to six persons a week to make the presentations, starting after March 28^th.  But to be fair to everyone – I require that everyone turn in by email the presentation by April 1^st.

No two students may have the same subject/topic.  Thus, you are encouraged to choose a topic and agree with me (in the discussion board classroom marked TOPICS) as soon as convenient.

3. One five-page article = 30% (due date May 1^st)

An article, based on your class presentation, of five pages written as if for a professional tax newsletter with supporting footnotes in blue-book format.  Example tax newsletters include Tax Analysts’ Tax Notes International and WGL’s Journal of International Taxation.

Your article may take your presentation further by analyzing a line of cases.  By example, structured finance and economic substance is a current case-line topic in the United States.

Again - no two students may have the same subject/topic as per the presentation above.  Thus, you are encouraged to choose a topic and agree with me (in the discussion board classroom TOPIC).

2) Final Exam = 30%

This will be an exam based on a fact pattern similar to my exams in Principles and Treaties.  Thus, I will place exam examples in the course materials by mid-semester.

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MATERIALS

Like all the courses, we have much material to cover in just 14/16 weeks.  To make it manageable, the text material is organized into twelve “swallowable” modules. The modules are further split into various topics, so that one module may stretch over two weeks, even three.

The modules will not contain formal study guide material each module like Principles and Treaties (assuming you have suffered through my previous courses).  Most interaction will occur in the discussion board classroom.  Thus, life should be slightly easier this semester – less assignments per se but more independent interaction from your side.  If you remain silent – I will call on you this semester in the classroom – that I can determine if you are following with the rest of us.

VII.       REFERENCE MATERIAL

            Reference material will be drawn and accessed from Internet enabled databases.  These databases are already part of the database collection provided to all students in the LLM program.

            BNA tax materials

            CCH tax materials

            Tax Analysts

Checkpoint Tax Materials (Thomson Tax’s amalgamation of RIA, WG&L, and Gee)

            Matthew Bender