Abstract The article comments on the integration of state and local taxation into the undergraduate and graduate tax curriculum of the U.S. State and local taxes generally receive little or no coverage in the undergraduate tax curriculums. Practitioners consider state and local taxes more worthy of academic study than some federal topics generally included in the tax curriculums. Educators have generally excluded state and local taxes from the undergraduate and possibly the graduate curriculums because of inadequate time to cover federal topics. Using a criterion of general applicability, state and local taxes, as well as federal topics, should be included in tax courses. However, the addition of state and local taxes to the courses will result in reduced coverage of federal topics. Apportionment and allocation of corporate income should be included in the second undergraduate course, after the federal corporation tax formula has been covered. Alternatively, apportionment and allocation could be the concluding topics for the corporate materials. States tax should be covered near the end of the second undergraduate course. This is true because the issues included in the sales tax discussion differ so greatly from the income tax topics discussed earlier in the two courses.
Seago et al. (Tue,) studied this question.