Diamond Graduate School of Law

LL.M. Program

Syllabus for Principles of International Taxation

Fall

I.          COURSE DESCRIPTION

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.

Professor Byrnes' background

Professor Byrnes is a US attorney and is the creator and instructor for EuroMoney’s international tax training and e-commerce programs, holding courses in London, Hong Kong, Singapore, Miami, Portugal, Cyprus, amongst other places.

He was a consultant editor for Kluwer Law & Tax Publishers (London) for many years before he was a consultant editor for Richmond Law & Tax, for the production of a complete international tax library E-book series.  He is Chief Author of the forthcoming loose-leaf series, Offshore Trusts & Companies Laws, Analysis and Tax Planning and is Chief-Author of Electronic Commerce: Law, Tax & Business, as well as Anti-Money Laundering.  He also worked on Kluwer’s internet database of tax materials as well as the International Fiscal Association’s (IFA) methodology of categorization of taxation.

For Thomson Tax, he is the author for the US Chapter for International Tax Systems and Planning Techniques, a series by Roy Saunders and Miles Dean.  Before that, he was the Associate Editor to Walter Diamond of the Diamond loose-leaf series: Tax and Trade Briefs. Matthew Bender (New York).

In 1995 he co-authored South African Tax Reform as well as served as managing editor of the Exchange Control Encyclopaedia (taken over by Butterworths). 

He is a Visiting Professor of International Taxation to the Masters program of the Faculty of Commerce, Law, and Management at the University of the Witwatersrand (Johannesburg) and before that was the coordinator and lecturer of the International Tax Masters of Commerce program at RAU (Johannesburg).

He was granted the title of Fellow (International Taxation) at the International Bureau of Fiscal Documentation (IBFD, Amsterdam) and has advised governments of developing economies on tax policies.  He holds a degree in Political Economics of the law track of the Murphy Institute of Tulane University and a Juris Doctorate from Loyola University School of Law.  His LL.M., specialized in European Business and Taxation, is from the University of Amsterdam Faculty of Law and the Europa Institute.

He has consulted for, and trained, publicly listed multinationals, and developed corporate and high net wealth individual tax efficient strategies for business operations and life style.

 Course Start Date: every Fall

Principles of International Taxation (“PIT”) is a primer for the concentration of International Taxation.  This course and its concentration provide much more than a comparative overview of the tax law and accounting of significant trade nations.  This course is designed for two groups of professionals with generally opposing aims: the group of in-house tax counsels of a multinational enterprise (“MNE”), accounting firm, or law firm whose focus is achieving the minimum global effective rate of taxation for an MNE and the group of revenue and treasury officials that seek to maximize tax collections with consideration for national economic policies.  This course starts with two weeks of political economic policy considerations that lead into questions concerning the drafting of national revenue law.  The following two weeks presents an overview of global tax planning, examining sources of law (i.e. public international law, bilateral and multilateral tax treaties, the European Union, trade organizations) and the basic global tax diagnostic.  The next five weeks examines the exercise of fiscal jurisdiction and the determination of the taxable income for natural persons, corporate entities, business operations, and types of income (i.e. services, interest, capital gains) and also how tax treaties effect the exercise of fiscal jurisdiction and limit the imposition of tax.  The following five weeks concern issues associated with multiple jurisdictions exercising taxation on persons, business operations, income and losses, and how jurisdictions may mitigate this double taxation (and double dipping of deductions and losses) under local law and also using tax treaties.  Finally, the course turns back to both the MNE’s diagnostic and the original political economic discussion, this time also addressing inflationary and other complex intermediate developing economy issues.

This course is primarily taught by Professor William H Byrnes with the assistance of Professor Brian Arnold (University of Western Ontario).  Besides the final examination that includes writing two client memos based on fact questions, this course uses common law case examination, complex case studies, personal and group assignments to assess the students.  Generally this course is taken concurrently with Tax Treaties.

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1.  familiarize you with the electronic campus and library

2.  introduce you to electronic study

3.  introduce you to the institutions and databases that are relevant to your study and to your professional career

4.  develop skills, using electronic resources supported by paper resources, to conduct efficient, effective, and thorough international tax research

5.    explain the writing methodology expected from you by your professors

6.       present the general legal principles applicable to your study

7.       present the parameters that guide your study

8.       present the tools of tax planning 

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Dear Student,

First, let me thank you for enrolling in this new and exciting type of education delivery.  As you know by now, we are the trend setters by offering the first developed online LLM program.

Traditional Class profile

Distance learning is uniquely appropriate in this field.  Let me tell you about your class.

Almost all of you (as you will learn from your communication in the conferencing) are working professionals in some area of the industry, such as banking, tax planning, both in-house and for firms, and corporate secretarial work.

You live equally spread out amongst the regions of the globe.

Many of you travel for your work.  Some of you spend an average of a week a month away from your home office.

Most of you work more than 50 hours a week, while many work more than 60 hours a week.

Can you imagine trying to put even half of us in a classroom in some city at the same time every week for three months?

Thus, together we embark upon this new, convenient, and effective way of learning.

What to expect from this course

This sixteen week course is different from the other program courses in that it starts out showing you how to learn using this new medium of education delivery. 

It starts out with some basic information that may seem to simple for some of you.  Read through it anyway.

This course is the foundation course to study in the program.  It will give you the necessary tools to undertake your study in the program.  Also, it will introduce you to each other (your colleagues for the rest of your study) and allow you the chance to network.

We could have allowed you to learn these things along the way.  But, many of you will think that because you are learning from behind a computer screen, that you are alone in your studies or that others have access to better research materials than yourself.  This is not true.

From my experience at Coopers & Lybrand (now PricewaterhouseCoopers), I did not meet many of the worldwide Coopers persons that I spoke with by email through our international Lotus Notes network.  But I knew that someone from the firm was always out in the cyber network to assist with my thinking process.  And in order to keep up with present discussions of US tax issues, I subscribed and participated to the email tax mailing lists of the ABA and Tax Analysts while consulting in Africa.

How do I begin?

You will join the class and myself in the cyber "classroom" by hitting the hyper link in Module 1 (your first week’s study material and assignments) of the study guide.  Thus, when you are ready to start, just open Module 1 in the study guide and follow the instructions.

Hope to see you there.

Regards,

Professor William H Byrnes, IV

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After reading the materials for a module, it is time to join the class discussion in the cyber classroom.

Weekly participation in the cyber classroom is required absent extenuating circumstances.  In this course, 20% of the course final grade will be comprised of a participation grade.

Participation grades will be based upon your 

•          submitting the assignments in a timely manner,
  

•          demonstration of preparation through the weekly discussion of topics, problems or issues.

Participation in the cyber classroom will be assessed by

•           evaluating your informed questions,
  

•         constructive comment and responses to other student’s questions and analysis of problems (i.e. take part in conference discussions through meaningful input for all of us involved in the course).

What if I do not participate every week?

The more that you participate in a meaningful way, the more of the 20 possible points (of the 100 that form your course grade) that you pick up.  Total lack of participation means that you start your testing and exams down 20 points (at 80) which would make it exceedingly difficult to pass the course with a B.

You may not tune in every week in a meaningful way (our clients always come first – right?)  Guide your participation as follows:

•          always turn in requested assignments (minus half-point for each day of a late assignment
  

•          in 14 weeks, you should come up with 14 useful comments or responses, maybe three comments one week and none for two weeks, but in the end you should have an average of one per week
  

•          assignments count as a comment, so if you have an assignment do, count it against that week’s comment

The conference classroom web-based system allows for easy communication with and among students and faculty in an interactive format that simulates traditional classroom discussions.

So what is the “cyber” classroom?

Participation in the conference classroom is asynchronous (simultaneous participation is not necessary).  Thus, you are not locked to being at a computer at a certain time (a good thing considering the times zones your class traverses).

You may participate in the classroom at any time from any computer hooked up to the web.  Thus, if you are waiting for several hours to transfer flights at the airport, walk into the airport business center, pull up to a computer, and enter the classroom.  The same goes for downtime at a hotel.  And most world cities have easy to use, inexpensive, internet cafes, and also internet access in the various public libraries.

The conference classroom interface allows a high level of interaction and flexibility: you can post text, graphics, HTML and internet links in the classroom, email your instructor directly or other students.

Our experience is that the postings in the cyber classroom social corner become very friendly, with students posting new born baby pictures or not-so-glamorous pictures from the office Christmas party.

To enter the conference classroom you must have a password.  The password is given to you when you register for the course.  Do not share it with anyone.  When your password accesses the conference classroom, the postings associated with it are automatically credited to your name – and thus are figured into your participation grade (for better or for worse).

Like all the courses, we have much material to cover in just 14 weeks.  To make it manageable, the text material is organized into “swallowable” modules.  A module should require about 5 to 20 hours of your time to study, outline, learn, and complete (it just depends…).  The modules are further split into topics as appropriate to separate different topics.

Each module consists of text material and complementary study guide material.  The study guide is both delivered as colloquial text in a book and as colloquial written lectures in the cyber classroom.

Sometimes the study guide hyperlinks to web pages outside the program in order to access supplementary text material or suggested reading material.

You will begin the course each week by accessing the weekly study guide module (from the hyperlink in the syllabus) and from there reading the required text material.

INSTRUCTOR'S PERSONAL STATEMENT

Enter the cyber classroom to receive my informal, social introduction of myself.