Module overview

Module title: Basic module Taxation/Auditing BW 14.1 (6 ECTS)
Tender: Every summer semester
Structure: Lecture/exercise (4 SWS)
Examination: Exam (100%)

Contents:

• Business taxation, auditing and related disciplines
  • Practical fields of application
  • Field of study and typical problems
  • Types of taxes and tax compliance
• Introduction: Corporate taxation
  • Personal Income Tax: Taxation of income at the personal level
  • Corporate Income Tax: Taxation of profits at company level
  • Trade Tax: Supplementary local taxes
  • Value added tax: Taxation of consumption
• Introduction: Tax Effects, Tax Planning, Tax Structuring
  • Marginal, average, indifference and effective tax burdens
  • Shifting tax effects between individuals, types of income and points in time
  • Choice of legal form
  • Cross-border tax planning
• Introduction: Auditing
  • Institutional basics of the company auditing
  • Corporate audit as a principal-agent problem

Module title: Specialisation module Taxation BW 14.2 (6 ECTS)
Tender: Every winter semester
Structure: Lecture/Exercise (4 SWS)
Examination: Exam (100%)

Contents:

• Taxation of income and profits
  
  • Defining income
  • Uniformity and taxation of income
• Tax burden of different legal forms for national investments
  
  • Tax burdens of corporations, partnerships, mixed forms
  • Tax burden of debt financing
  • Tax burden on hidden reserves
• Tax burden of different organisational forms for cross-border investments
  
  • Avoidance of double taxation
  • Tax burden of direct investments
  • Cross-border tax planning and location decisions

Module title: Specialisation module in auditing BW 14.5 (6 ECTS)
Tender: Every winter semester
Structure: Lecture 1: Accounting and profit determination (1 SWS), Lecture 2: Auditing Methods (2 SWS), Exercise (1 SWS)
Examination: Exam (100%) 

Contents:

• Purposes of financial and tax accounting
• Authoritativeness of commercial law on tax law 
• Principles of proper bookkeeping and determination of taxable profits
• Recognition and valuation of assets
• Preparation and disclosure requirements
• Accounting for leasing and investment subsidiaries

Module title: Specialisation module International Taxation and Goals for Sustainable Development BW 14.6 (6 ECTS)
Tender: Every summer semester
Structure: Lecture/Exercise (4 SWS)
Examination: Exam (100%) 

Contents:

• Revenue generation, steering purpose and sustainability
  
  • Indirect and direct pursuit of sustainability goals through taxation
  • Interpersonal tax equity in international comparison
  • Intergenerational tax equity in international comparison
  • Principles and connecting factors of international taxation
• International tax avoidance and its regulation
  • Methods of tax avoidance by multinational companies (financing structures, transfer pricing)
  • Regulation of tax avoidance through reforming income taxation (coordination of transfer prices, minimum taxation)
  • Regulation of tax avoidance through transparency (country-by-country reporting, disclosure obligations for tax-saving models)
• Tax guidance on goals of sustainable development 
  • Income tax incentives for research & development (patent boxes)
  • Tax measures to promote electromobility (home office, company cars)
  • Effect of the taxation of intergenerational asset transfers (promotion of innovation through the establishment of foundations - US inheritance tax, promotion of intra-family business transfers or innovation through start-ups)
• International revenue taxation

Module title: Tax Effects and Tax Planning MW 14.2  (6 ECTS)
Tender: Every winter semester
Structure: Lecture: Tax Effects and Tax Planning (2 SWS); Exercise and seminar: Tax Effects and Tax Planning (2 SWS)
Examination: Presentation and discussion (approx. 50%), seminar paper to be written at home (approx. 50%) 

• Tasks and research objectives of business taxation
  • Development and overview of research objectives
  • Tax burden, tax effect and tax planning
• Fundamentals of tax burdens, tax effects and tax planning
  • Decision neutrality of taxation
  • Decision-neutral tax systems
  • Measuring the tax burden
• Analytical measurement of the tax burden and investment planning
  • Tax burden and national investments
  • Tax burden and cross-border investments
• Empirical measurement of the tax burden and tax planning
  • Empirical effective tax rates
  • Cross-border tax avoidance
• Tax effects on investment and financing decisions
  • Tax effects on investments under certainty and uncertainty
  • Tax effects on capital structure 1 and capital structure 2

Module title: Tax Accounting MW 14.5 (6 ECTS)
Tender: Every summer semester
Structure: Lecture (2 SWS) and exercise (2 SWS)
Examination: Exam (100%) or inclusion of a graded exercise (form and proportion of this performance will be announced before the start of the course)

Contents:

• Theory of Profit Determination
  • Income measurement and neutrality of tax profit determination
  • Purposes of profit determination
  • Accounting policy
• Tax Accounting
  • The authoritative principle in international comparison
  • Differences between the tax balance sheet and the commercial balance sheet
  • Tax deferral in the corporate groups
• Tax Accounting and Tax Planning
  • Accounting for leases
  • Subsequent consumption method
  • Pension provisions
  • Employee share options
• Tax Accounting and Information Function
  • Meaningfulness of book-tax differences
  • Determination of profits and empirical measurement of the tax burden

Module title: Taxes and Business Valuation MW 14.1 (6 ECTS)
Tender: Every winter semester
Structure: Lecture (2 SWS) and exercise (2 SWS)
Examination: Exam (100%) 

Contents:

• Introduction: Problem areas of business valuation
  • Prices, valuation and the definition of a company
  • Occasions for company valuation
• Fundamentals of company taxation
  • Overview of company taxation
  • Taxation of corporations, partnerships and debt financing
• Valuation in the perpetuity model and tax effects
  • Basic model and tax effects
  • Integrating debt financing
  • Tax effects of reorganisations and company acquisitions
• Earnings approach
  • Capitalised earnings method for company valuation
  • Consideration of risk in the capitalised earnings value method
• DCF method
  • Modigliani/Miller irrelevance and taxes
  • Alternative DCF methods
  • Integration of personal taxation in DCF methods
• Residual profit method

Module title: Auditing MW 14.6 (6 ECTS)
Tender: Every summer semester
Structure: Lecture (2 SWS) and exercise (2 SWS)
Examination: Exam (100%) or inclusion of a graded exercise (form and proportion of this performance will be announced before the start of the course)

Contents:

• Accounting, corporate governance and principal-agent problems
• Theory of cash and asset-based profit determination
• Accounting principles: Realisation principle and prudent profit determination
• Accounting and information function
• Linking the determination of financial and taxable profits
• Deferred taxes and their valuation
• Information about tax-related risks
• Financing-related agency conflicts
• Regulation of profit determination and agency conflicts
• Agency conflicts and annual audit

Module title: FAcT(s) on Sustainability MW 41.7 (6 ECTS)
Tender: Every winter semester
Structure: Lecture (2 SWS) and exercise (2 SWS)
Examination: Exam (100%)

Contents:

The course deals with a broad spectrum of sustainability-specific issues from the perspective of FAcT (Finance, Accounting & Taxation) - through cooperation between the four professorships in this focus area. Selected current sustainability problems and challenges from the areas of sustainable finance, sustainability controlling, sustainability reporting and sustainability in taxation will be addressed. Taking an integrative FAcT perspective, relevant concepts, methods and instruments for solving these issues will be presented and critically analysed. At the beginning, basic terms and concepts in the subject area of sustainability will be taught. This is followed by a discussion of various FAcT perspectives on current challenges and issues in the area. Selected topics from sustainable finance (e.g. integration of ESG ratings in sustainable portfolio optimisation, performance of sustainable investment funds), sustainability controlling (e.g. selection and determination of relevant key figures as well as the design of sustainability-related incentive systems), sustainability reporting (e.g. creation and analysis of ESG reports) and sustainability management (e.g. preparation and analysis of ESG information and sustainability reports in accordance with GRI, ISSB or ESRS) and taxation in connection with sustainability (e.g. tax transparency, behavioural tax incentives and redistribution to achieve sustainability goals) are presented and discussed.

Part "Taxation and Sustainability" (Prof Harald Jansen)