President’s Welcome 2022
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President’s Welcome 2022

Dear IFA Friends,

This is an exciting time to be an international tax professional! Welcome to 2022 and thanks for being a member of IFA.

International tax is always changing, which is part of its attraction for all of us who work in the field. But 2022 brings an unprecedented menu of issues for us to absorb.

The Pillar One and Pillar Two proposals by the OECD – now endorsed by almost 140 countries – top the list, of course. Pillar One allocates new taxing rights to market countries. Is this a principled theory? Or just a political compromise? Pillar Two represents an unprecedented coordination of tax rules among countries. Will the new rules work? And will countries indeed work together?

Other significant developments and debates loom, even though these other topics are sometimes obscured by the debate over the Two Pillars.

The growing use of technology to administer tax rules, digital services taxes, tax proposals to address income inequality (within countries and across countries), dispute resolution, the future of tax treaties – each of these topics, and more, merit close attention and would be headline topics in a more typical year.

For IFA, this presents a wonderful opportunity. Through seminars, webinars, regional and international programs, we must dig deeply into these issues. We want to help our members learn, so that each of us can contribute to the intellectual and political debates. And, importantly, we want to provide platforms through which our members can meet each other, build friendships, and knit together the international tax profession.

With these big opportunities, there are big challenges. The COVID-19 pandemic continues to cast its shadow over our plans. IFA must find ways to attract new members, become more diverse (and explore what diversity means for our profession), and strengthen our IFA presence in Africa and countries where we are not yet as strong as we should be.

Global IFA is eager to support you and all our branches on this journey. Ask for help when you need it; contribute your time and talents when you can. We are beginning an exciting and important year for IFA and for international tax. Thank you for joining us in this effort.

2 January 2022

Peter Barnes
President IFA

 

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