DEANS' PRESENTATION

The Master in Corporate Tax Law was established in 1981 and is the oldest private law master at the Paris Dauphine University.

The course is aimed at students wishing to pursue a career in tax either in French or international law firms and management positions in legal, tax or financial departments of large companies. The Master provides students with the skills and experience to springboard into these positions.

Each year the Master welcomes students from law and business schools. The Master has a practical and commercial focus which gives the students the best possible training as they embark on a career in industry or in legal practice. The practical focus of the Master is achieved through classes given by practitioners in international law firms or multinational corporations whose classes offer an analysis of real-life case studies.  This training allows the students to be fully operational when they start their internships or employment at the end of the course in March.

Fluency in English is a prerequisite of the course as 30% of the classes are taught and examined in English. The importance given to English by the course is a reflection of the tax industry, in which English is often in the lingua franca, this is particularly the case in Anglo-American Law firms and Tax Departments of multinational companies.

The course offers core modules in French domestic tax law, European Tax Law and International tax law. The course aims to give the students have a strong understanding of these concepts and indeed to offer the students a foundation from which to develop into leading tax professionals. The course also recognizes that it is of fundamental importance that students are also taught other interrelated subjects. It is for this reason that the course has a multidisciplinary approach with modules in financial analysis, accounting, company law and US tax law.

As tax experts often rely on their teams to produce advice for clients, the Master has taken steps to reflect this in the course. Consequently, team work exercises are now part of course, with some subjects examined on the group work rather than individually. The course has also introduced an initiative called the ‘professional project’. This initiative offers the students to develop a team spirit within a group while working on a joint project related to the Masters.

To perfect the student’s research, writing and presentation skills, each student must draft an article on a topical area of tax law to be published in the Master’s Corporate Tax Law Review (Revue de Fiscalité de l’entreprise). This offers the students the chance to present their research to a domestic and international audience of tax and legal professionals.

It is in this way that the Master offers a complete and multidisciplinary training which responds to the needs of the tax industry and to students’ expectations.

The agency that reviews higher education establishments in France (AERES) has credited the Master in Corporate Taxation Law at Dauphine with the highest possible marks:

A+
Teaching
A+
Employability of the students and entry into workplace
A+
Management and organisation of the subject area

The agency AERES gave the following conclusion to their report: ‘this is high quality training for a specialised area of law and we can only encourage them to keep up the good work.’

  • Emmanuel Dinh
    Emmanuel Dinh Maître de Conférences en Droit privé, Avocat Associé, Co-Directeur du Master 221
  • Thibaut Massart
    Thibaut Massart Professeur des Universités, Co-Directeur du Master 221