L'einsegnement du droit fiscal en Italie [Teaching Tax law in Italy]

Taxation law is a recent academic discipline in Italy, as the first scientific publications in the matter dates back to the half of the XX century. Despite the young age, it has become more and more important both in the departments of law and in those of economics: it eventually became a compulsory subject to be taken in the study programmes by all the students. It covers traditionally the study of the taxes as they are introduced and charged by the state or the other territorial subdivisions, although more and more importance is attributed now to international and EU rules as elective exams are available to students in these different sub-disciplines. The number of tax lawyers in Italy is not impressive, as a consequence education is targeted at providing to the students a general understanding of taxation as legal, economic and also social phenomenon not necessarily connected with the tax trial. This allows them to operate in the business world or for the public sector, where needed. Recently, more emphasis has been attributed to the new frontiers of education to tax: they include tax compliance and tax negotiation, consistently with the need for a more inclusive and interdisciplinary teaching, as recommended by the Italian Ministry of University. In this respect, teaching tax law is keeping place with other more traditional disciplines (such as civil or criminal law) and in some occasions anticipates, both in methods and content, decisions that will be taken by other sectors later on.