Dr. Wolfgang Schön of the Max Planck Institute (Munich) and Dr. Richard Collier of Oxford's Saïd Business School will discuss: “Taxation of the Digital Economy: Towards a new world tax order?” 

The digital transformation of the modern global economy has provided an opportunity to question the current international tax rules, in place for the past century. Following the efforts made to tackle base erosion and profit shifting (BEPS) through the G20/OECD BEPS Project 1.0, the Inclusive Framework has focused on the more fundamental tax challenges arising from digitalisation, resulting in the Pillar One and Pillar Two proposals. This Seminar will discuss these proposals in the context of the BEPS Project and the wider international tax system to ask: Are we moving towards a new world tax order, and how are we doing so?

About the speakers

Richard Collier is an Associate Fellow at the Saïd Business School, Oxford University, where he teaches on the MSc in Taxation. His work focuses on the rules for the cross-border allocation of income relating to transfer pricing and permanent establishments. Prior to this role, he was a Partner at PwC. Richard has worked extensively on financial sector tax issues and topics relating to international tax policy. He was an expert witness in a UK case on the permanent establishment rules and in a high-profile European Commission state aid case. He recently finished a book on the Arm’s Length Principle after the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development’s (OECD's) base erosion and profit sharing (BEPS) project. He has also worked on issues relating to the destination-based cash flow tax and international tax treaties and is currently engaged in a major project relating to tax policy and financial markets.  

Wolfgang Schön is Director of the Department of Business and Tax Law at the Max Planck Institute for Tax Law and Public Finance in Munich and Honorary Professor at Munich University. He is a Member of the Board of Trustees of the IBFD and an International Research Fellow at the Oxford University Centre for Business Taxation. He was Chairman of the Board of the European Association of Tax Law Professors and the Vice-Chair of the Permanent Scientific Committee of IFA. Wolfgang has been a visiting professor at Tilburg University, Vienna University of Business and Economics, NYU, Columbia University, University of Pennsylvania, UBC, the Universities of Antwerp and Liège and Bocconi University (Milan). 

About the chair

Ian Roxan (BA University of Toronto; LLB Osgoode Hall Law School, Toronto; MPhil and PhD Cambridge) has been a Lecturer in Law at LSE since 1995 and Senior Lecturer in Law since 2003. He is originally from Canada. He is a non-practising solicitor in England and is an Ontario (Canada) barrister and solicitor. His Cambridge PhD dissertation was in Economics, and examined the trust as an economic institution. He began his career practising trust and tax law with a firm in Toronto. He has also worked in the Tax Policy Branch of the Canadian Department of Finance, where he was involved in developing tax policy and drafting legislation for three Budgets. Until 1995 he practised with a large international law firm in Brussels. He specialised in international, European and US tax planning, European corporate law, and value added tax, looking at a wide range of issues. He has participated in tax reform projects in developing countries in Africa and Asia for the World Bank and the Harvard Law School International Tax Program. In 2000 he won the Wedderburn Prize for his article 'Assuring Real Freedom of Movement in Direct Taxation' in the Modern Law Review.

 #LSETax