Tax Systems

Joel Slemrod, University of Michigan

September 30 – October 4 , 2024

This is a Ph.D.-level topics course in tax systems. It focuses on the building blocks of a tax system approach to tax analysis, taking seriously its administrative and compliance costs as well as policy instruments other than tax rates and bases, such as the extent and nature of tax enforcement and the remittance system.  It addresses the determinants of tax avoidance and evasion, and modern empirical methods to understand their nature, including bunching analysis and randomized controlled trials. It examines how evasion is affected by notification interventions, information reporting, withholding, network effects, public disclosure, and auditing coverage. It covers the research on the elasticity of taxable income and other bases, and looks at how optimal tax theory must be adapted to account for the non-standard aspects of tax systems such as tax administration and enforcement. The course also addresses behavioral biases in tax, both the evidence for such biases and how the presence of biases affects optimal tax policy design. 

Joel Slemrod is the David Bradford Distinguished University Professor of Economics, and the Paul W. McCracken Collegiate Professor of Business Economics and Public Policy, at the University of Michigan. He serves as Director of the Office of Tax Policy Research, an interdisciplinary research center housed at the Ross School of Business. He received an A.B. degree from Princeton University and the Ph.D. in economics from Harvard University. Prior to joining the University of Michigan, Professor Slemrod was assistant professor and then associate professor at the University of Minnesota. He was a National Fellow at the Hoover Institution, and was the senior economist for tax policy at the President's Council of Economic Advisers in 1984-5.  In 2012, Professor Slemrod received the National Tax Association’s most prestigious award, the Daniel M. Holland Medal, for distinguished lifetime contributions to the study and practice of public finance. He has served as the President of the National Tax Association (2005-6) and the International Institute of Public Finance (2015-8). He has been co-editor of the Journal of Public Economics and editor of the National Tax Journal. He has written several books, most recently, with Michael Keen, Rebellion, Rascals, and Revenue: Tax Follies and Wisdom through the Ages, published by Princeton University Press in 2021.

 

Application

The application deadline ended on June 26, 2024.

Admission and Registration

The Study Center communicates admission decision by the end of July, 2024, and sends participants the corresponding invoice. The registration form will be sent after the Center receives the payment of the course fee.