Note: Audio recording of the event is available in the downloads tab.

In this lively public event, Professor Judith Freedman will present on the current state of play in the United Kingdom on multinational corporate tax, followed by a panel discussion on these issues in the Australian context, including perspectives from the revenue agency, policy, the business and advisory community and civil society. Corporate tax is a hot topic in Australia and the United Kingdom. Australia proposes to follow the United Kingdom in enacting multinational anti-abuse and diverted profits taxes, and both countries are implementing coordinated exchange of information and country by country reporting as part of the OECD Base Erosion and Profit Shifting Action Plan. At the same time, the United Kingdom has dramatically lowered its company tax rate (to reach 17 per cent by 2020), while Australia is engaged in a policy debate on our corporate tax rate.

Judith Freedman is Professor of Taxation Law at Oxford University and a Fellow of Worcester College. She was awarded a CBE in 2013 for services to tax research and appointed an Honorary Fellow of the Chartered Institute of Taxation in 2015. Judith is a leading expert on corporate and business taxation, corporate governance, corporate social responsibility, the interaction between law and accounting and small businesses. She participated in the establishment of the Oxford University Centre for Business Taxation and is now its Director of Legal Research and a member of its Steering Committee and Advisory Board. She has served on a number of Law Society, DTI and Inland Revenue Committees and advisory groups and was a member of the Company Law Review’s working party on small companies. She is a member of the Office of Tax Simplification Consultative Committee on Small Business Taxation and was on the Tax Avoidance Study Group appointed to report to the Exchequer Secretary on the question of a General Anti-avoidance Rule. Judith is the general editor of the British Tax Review and is on numerous editorial boards and is a member of the Council and the Tax Law Review Committee of the Institute for Fiscal Studies, contributing to the Mirrlees report ‘Reforming the Tax System for the 21st Century. Judith’s contribution to, and impact upon, taxation has been acknowledged by her inclusion in International Tax Review’s Global Tax 50 including the new MSC in Taxation starting in Oxford in September 2016.

Panel Speakers

• Andrew Mills, Second Commissioner, Australian Taxation Office
• Karen Payne, CEO of the Board of Taxation, Treasury
• Kelly Dent, Head of Public Policy and Advocacy, Oxfam Australia
• Chris Vanderkley, Head of Tax, GE Australia, New Zealand