o x f o r d l a w - graduate taught courses: personal taxation

oxford law

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Personal Taxation
Taxation comprises a difficult and complex mass of material. It is hard to deny that proposition, but the Oxford Personal Tax course is designed to be questioning and challenging. For a start, only a limited range of taxes is within the syllabus: income tax on trusts and annual payments, capital gains tax and inheritance tax. Legislative and judicial methods of countering tax avoidance are dealt with in depth. We attempt to teach the material in such a way that the detail is much less important than the cases and the ideas underpinning the law. Company taxation is not covered in the Personal Tax course, but is dealt with in the Corporate and Business Taxation course. The two tax courses on the BCL are complementary but are also completely freestanding so may be taken alone or together depending on the student's interest. It is not essential to have studied tax previously in order to take either the Personal Taxation course or Corporate and Business Taxation but students who have studied the subject at undergraduate level will find that the material in the graduate courses will flow on well from their initial courses and will enhance their existing knowledge of taxation.

A theme that runs through a significant proportion of the course is the way in which trusts are affected by taxation, particularly in comparison with taxation of individuals. This involves considerable use of trusts cases and theories - not surprising when one remembers the number of trusts cases that have arisen in a taxation context. Accordingly, it is not advisable to study Personal Taxation unless you have covered Trusts already or are taking it as an option in the MJur.

Personal Taxation offers the opportunity to consider an almost entirely statutory area and study the reaction of the judiciary to it. This is particularly revealing in the fast developing area of judicial reaction to tax avoidance schemes. This is an area of intense judicial activity and disagreement, at its heart being the question as to how far the courts should go to defeat schemes that set out to frustrate the intended effect of taxes or exemptions from taxation. This is an area that benefits from comparisons with other countries, although most of Personal Taxation has its focus on purely English taxation provisions.


			text: larger smaller

	Personal Taxation Taxation comprises a difficult and complex mass of material. It is hard to deny that proposition, but the Oxford Personal Tax course is designed to be questioning and challenging. For a start, only a limited range of taxes is within the syllabus: income tax on trusts and annual payments, capital gains tax and inheritance tax. Legislative and judicial methods of countering tax avoidance are dealt with in depth. We attempt to teach the material in such a way that the detail is much less important than the cases and the ideas underpinning the law. Company taxation is not covered in the Personal Tax course, but is dealt with in the Corporate and Business Taxation course. The two tax courses on the BCL are complementary but are also completely freestanding so may be taken alone or together depending on the student's interest. It is not essential to have studied tax previously in order to take either the Personal Taxation course or Corporate and Business Taxation but students who have studied the subject at undergraduate level will find that the material in the graduate courses will flow on well from their initial courses and will enhance their existing knowledge of taxation. A theme that runs through a significant proportion of the course is the way in which trusts are affected by taxation, particularly in comparison with taxation of individuals. This involves considerable use of trusts cases and theories - not surprising when one remembers the number of trusts cases that have arisen in a taxation context. Accordingly, it is not advisable to study Personal Taxation unless you have covered Trusts already or are taking it as an option in the MJur. Personal Taxation offers the opportunity to consider an almost entirely statutory area and study the reaction of the judiciary to it. This is particularly revealing in the fast developing area of judicial reaction to tax avoidance schemes. This is an area of intense judicial activity and disagreement, at its heart being the question as to how far the courts should go to defeat schemes that set out to frustrate the intended effect of taxes or exemptions from taxation. This is an area that benefits from comparisons with other countries, although most of Personal Taxation has its focus on purely English taxation provisions.