Tax laws of different countries and regions are based on their diverse legal traditions and systems in vigor. Two mainstream legal systems, namely the continental system and the common law system will be stressed in this course. The former system is largely exemplified through the introduction of Macao taxation while the latter by the Hong Kong tax regime. Therefore, the students can appreciate how a same income or expense will be treated under various legal requirements and will be able to make critical comparisons and to eventually advise tax information users from different regimes using various angles. Again, taxation requires firstly thorough assimilation of the legal justifications before they are applied to tax computations. Therefore, both conceptual and computational understandings are stressed. All court cases illustrated in the course are from international examples which will therefore touch on issues such as tax planning and transfer pricing as well as international tax treatises.

CILO-1: Use tax principles, ordinances, and precedents to critically evaluate individual cases and to present ideas and arguments in a logical manner. CILO-2: Determine assessable income and profits (especially for corporations) through performing tax computations with full legal support. CILO-3: Critically assess in a global manner the planning of taxation issues for corporations through the allocation of scarce resources while abiding with legal requirements and international conventions. CILO-4: Present flows of thoughts in a logical, comprehensive yet focused manner with strong supporting arguments based on legal support and facts.