Tax ethics education within the chartered accountant curriculum in South Africa

Abstract

A Chartered Accountant performs a number of roles including that of a tax adviser. In performing such duties, Chartered Accountants provide tax advice and devise tax-planning strategies. Recently, tax planning and tax avoidance strategies, including the ethical behaviour of tax professionals, have come under the spotlight, as the ideas of fairness, morality and ethics have become part of the global tax debate. This report examines how accredited academic programmes training Chartered Accountants effectively incorporate ethics into the taxation curriculum for both undergraduate and postgraduate students. As the foundation of the Chartered Accountancy profession entails responsible leaders who uphold the highest ethical standards, the report evaluates how ethics and ethical behaviour can be incorporated into the current taxation curriculum of academic programmes accredited by the South African Institute of Chartered Accountants. The purpose of this study is to understand what areas within the tax curriculum ethics can be incorporated into, the definition of ethics, the teaching of ethics and whether a need for teaching ethics in taxation exists. This research was conducted based on an extensive review of relevant literature. The findings define ethics and ethical behaviour and suggest that a need exists for teaching tax ethics, considering the reality of tax avoidance and the role of tax professionals. Furthermore, the research finds that ethics and ethical behaviour can be taught. The report concludes by suggesting teaching methods that could be used to incorporate ethics into tax. Keywords: Taxation, ethics, education, accounting