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WU Vienna Tax law


Geerten Michielse

Born in 1960; worked as a tax consultant specializing in international taxation matters before completing his post-doctoral lecturing qualification on the subject of Thin capitalization in international tax law. Michielse is a senior economist at the tax policy division of the Fiscal Affairs department of the International Monetary Fund in Washington, DC. He is responsible for legal drafting and policy advice in tax matters. He fulfills an advisory role for several foreign financial administrations (Uzbekistan, Mongolia, and Iran) and has worked on crisis countries in Europe (Iceland, Greece, and Cyprus). Michielse has been tax professor in the Netherlands, France, and the USA and gives guest lectures at a number of universities around the globe.

Although the underlying foundations of most modern tax systems are similar, each tax law has its own distinct features resulting from different tax policy choices and often deep cultural differences. Aside from its practical value to tax practitioners dealing with transnational transactions, comparative tax law has become a significant discipline in the literature of tax law and policy because it is an important means by which tax students and practitioners can enrich their understanding of their own tax systems and can learn about the factors that determine tax legislative outcomes in different countries.&nbsp; In this course a number of the leading studies in comparative tax law will be examined in order to discern the deep structure of the income tax, how tax laws reflect the values and institutions of different countries, and the extent to which one country can transplant tax laws from another country in order to improve its tax system.

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