Robert AttardRobert Attard, EY’s tax policy leader for central and southeast Europe, served as a panelist at the 2015 International Fiscal Association (IFA) congress held in Basel, Switzerland.
It was the first time a Maltese academic was invited to speak at this prestigious international congress. Attard participated in the seminar entitled ‘Practical protection of taxpayers in the tax litigation process, the judge’s conference’.
Other panelists included Judge Gaetano Pagone from the Federal Court of Australia, Justice Gerald Rip, former Chief Justice of Canada’s tax court, justice Vineet Kothari from the High Court of India and Justice Emmanuelle Cortot-Boucher from the Conseil d’Etat, France.
The seminar also incorporated a moot court exercise in which Attard acted in the interests of the Department of Revenue Agency and Philip Baker QC acted in the interests of a taxpayer. The case revolved around a complex hypothetical transfer pricing case raising topical issues of data privacy.
The IFA was established in 1938 with its headquarters in the Netherlands. It is the only non-governmental and non-sectoral international organisation dealing with fiscal matters. IFA is most renowned for this annual congress which this year attracted over 2,200 tax practitioners from all over the world.