More Tax Chat! Live and Uploaded!
Greetings, all.
The first day of fall brings a bit of sadness, as I realize in another world I would be preparing to travel to Pretoria, South Africa, for the 5th International Conference on Taxpayer Rights. Regrettably, we’ve had to postpone that conference until next year, for the 6th and 7th of October, 2021. We also plan to hold the regularly scheduled 2021 conference on May 27th and 28th, 2021 in Athens, Greece. So there will be an abundance of conferences next year, and we also plan to livestream them for those of you who can’t or don’t want to travel. You can learn more about the International Conference on Taxpayer Rights here.
Save the Date for the Next Tax Chat!
As you know, the theme for the South Africa conference is “Taxpayer Rights, Human Rights: Issues for Developing Countries.” The economic repercussions worldwide of the coronavirus pandemic give a new urgency to exploring this topic. So I’m pleased to announce that this is subject of our next Tax Chat! which will be held on Tuesday, 06 October 2020 at noon Eastern Daylight Time. Be sure to check your time zone – it is 6 pm South African Standard Time, 5 pm British Summer Time, and 6 pm Central European Summer Time.
Our guests for the Tax Chat! on October 6th are Professors Riel Franzsen and Annet Oguttu, and Asha Ramgobin. Riel is the director of the African Tax Institute at the University of Pretoria, which is the host of the 6th International Conference on Taxpayer Rights. Annet is a professor in the Department of Taxation at the University of Pretoria, and Asha is Executive Director and co-founder of the Human Rights Development Initiative in Pretoria, South Africa.
We will discuss the role of taxpayer rights and human rights as a means to achieve sustainable development goals. We’ll also chat about the work of the African Tax Institute, the challenges of offshore tax avoidance for African countries, the role of African countries in OECD initiatives, and the 6th International Conference on Taxpayer Rights.
Please join us for the second Tax Chat! Registration is free, but limited to the first 100 people who sign up, so don’t delay. You can register here.
Announcing the Center’s YouTube Channel
Yay! We have created a YouTube channel, on which we will post all the Tax Chats! Although people do this kind of thing every day of their lives, for someone like myself, who is slowly clawing her way into the twenty-first century technologically, this feels like a huge accomplishment. The new channel will give those of you who weren’t able to participate in the live Tax Chat! the opportunity to watch the recorded session.
Our inaugural Tax Chat! with Professor Pasquale Pistone and Philip Baker, QC is now uploaded to the channel. In it we discuss international and national trends in taxpayer rights identified in the recently published Observatory on the Protection of Taxpayer Rights. Topics included the right to privacy in light of automatic and other exchanges of information between tax agencies; mandatory disclosure and its interrelationship with attorney-client privilege; and proportionality of sanctions and penalties.
That’s it for now. I hope you all are well and staying safe. Until next time,
Nina
Nina E. Olson | Executive Director | Center for Taxpayer Rights
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