DeSTaT project group meeting Oslo, Norway June 2016

07 Jul 2016
DeSTaT project group, Oslo July 2016
07 Jul 2016

UCT academics participate in global project on sustainable tax governance in developing countries

Oslo, Norway 29 June 2016. Professor Jennifer Roeleveld and Associate Professor Craig West of the Department of Finance and Tax and the UCT Tax Institute for Fiscal Research represented UCT at the DeSTaT project group in Oslo, Norway, during June 2016.

The DeSTaT project (sustainable tax governance in developing countries through global tax transparency) has made great progress with a seminar at the Department of Public and International Law, University of Oslo. 

Professor Jennifer Roeleveld (the South African antenna team leader and nominee for UCT) and Associate Professor Craig West both from the Department of Finance and Tax attended the penultimate meeting of the project where new participants from Kenya, Tanzania and Mauritius also provided valuable input.

The main countries involved in this collaboration are Austria and Norway (Northern antenna) and South Africa, Colombia, Brazil, Uruguay and Uganda (Southern antenna). Each team leader is attached to a particular University and were chosen for their expertise.  The project has convened annually for the past 5-years in each of the different participating countries to work on a comparative basis on a selection of topics.

The project was extended by the Research Council of Norway by another year to enable successful completion of the meta articles which will be published in 2016/2017. The articles are designed to express the views and recommendations of developing countries, particularly to inform the United Nations and the OECD as the world grapples with base erosion and profit shifting (BEPS) in the context of loss of tax revenue in many countries.

Some of the meta articles discussed at the meeting were: Tax Transparency: Protection of taxpayer’s Rights, Transparent Tax systems for Investors: Challenges for lawmakers and Tax Administrations, Preventing Tax Arbitrage via Hybrid Mismatches: BEPS Action 2 and Developing Countries and FATCA in the perspective of developing countries together with a seminar on “is the agenda of global tax governance fit for developing countries” presented by Prof Geffrey Owens.