PUBPOL 495 is open to students in the Public Policy BA program, by permission only.
Oliver Wendell Holmes famously said that "Taxes are what we pay for civilized society," but who should pay and how much? In this course, we will develop the interdisciplinary tools of policy analysis to engage in several current debates in tax policy at the local, state, federal, and international levels. Our emphasis will be on written and oral communication skills, teamwork, and discussion. My goal for this course is not to turn students into experts on tax policy. Rather, we will use tax policy topics as fodder to hone our analytical thinking, communication strategies, and other skills that are essential to the public policy profession
