Dear Friends,

It is my great pleasure to announce that registration is open for the 8^th International Conference on Taxpayer Rights!  The theme of the conference is Access to Justice: Judicial Review & Alternative Dispute Resolution.  It will be held from 24 to 26 May, 2023, in Santiago, Chile.  This year the conference is hosted by the the Centro de Estudios Tributarios at the Universidad de Chile in Santiago, Chile.  The conference will be in-person and also live-streamed.  You can view the agenda for the 8^th International Conference on Taxpayer Rights (ICTR) here and register for the conference here.

In any system based on the rule of law, judicial review helps ensure that government actions are transparent and proportional, and that they adhere to the principles by which society is organized.  Judicial review is also essential to achieving a balance between the collective interests of the state and the individual interests of persons (natural and artificial) governed by the state.  Barriers to access to judicial review can be erected by procedural requirements – e.g., pre-payment of the tax liability, exhaustion of administrative remedies – and by societal inequities – e.g., inability to afford representation by counsel.   Further barriers and conflicts arise when multiple jurisdictions or courts are involved, or where tax law is treated differently from other areas of law.

Past ICTRs have examined the role taxpayer rights play in the tax audit and collection context.  This year’s conference sessions will examine judicial review of tax administration and tax law from this perspective of taxpayer rights; topics include:

• A rights-based foundation for access to judicial review;
• Tax issues and courts of different remit;
• Judicial review of tax matters in non-tax norms and fora;
• Observatory for the Protection of Taxpayer Rights and current developments;
• Barriers to access to or deprivation of judicial review;
• Judicial review of cross-border tax disputes; and
• Alternative dispute resolution and judicial review.

On 24 May 2023, we will hold two free sessions:

• Judges’ Roundtable: Self-Represented Taxpayers – The Judicial Response; and
• Taxpayer Advocate/Ombuds/Tax Clinic Workshop: Dispute Resolution.

We are very excited to be able to convene the conference in-person, but we also want to continue our efforts to make the conference available to those cannot or are uncomfortable with traveling.  So we are pleased to provide a live-streamed option at reduced registration fees, including for students.

The University is arranging for special hotel nightly rates for conference attendees at two nearby hotels; information about the rates will be sent directly to registrants after they have completed their registration. We are so very grateful to the University and our sponsors —  Tax Notes, the American College of Tax Counsel, IFA-USA Branch, and Caplin & Drysdale, Chartered — as well as IBFD, the conference’s technical advisor, and our planning committee! 

We hope to see you at the conference, either in-person or virtually!  If you have any questions, please do not hesitate to reach out to us at conference@taxpayer-rights.org.

All the best,

Nina

Nina E. Olson
Executive Director