Launch of the Centre for Tax Governance

The Centre for Tax Governance (CETAG), part of the Accountability and Governance Research Cluster, was launched on the 16th June by Professor Penelope Tuck (Department of Accounting, BBS). The CETAG is funded by the Accountability and Governance Research Cluster and CETAG’s scope is to combine researchers from accounting and management, law and social policy and focus broadly on accountability and governance of taxation.

The first event of CETAG was a one day conference that attracted over 40 leading tax academics and practioneers to discuss the Evolving Nature of Tax Policy. The conference started with an impressive talk by the keynote speaker, Professor Sven Steinmo from the European University Institute, Florence, Italy. In his presentation titled “Willing to pay? Considering different cultures of compliance”, Professor Steinmo outlined the main determinants that explain the large variation in tax compliance across several developed countries. The event was followed by presentations from academics from several institutions such as Ann Mumford (King’s College), Rodrigo Ormeño- Pérez (Department of Accounting, BBS), Elaine Doyle (University of Limerick) Professor Hans Gribnau (Leiden and Tilburg Universities) Penelope Tuck (Department of Accounting, BBS) and Birmingham Law School alumnus Dominic de Cogan (University of Cambridge).

Participants commented:

• “The conference was great and was really well attended.  The level of engagement and discussion was super”. 
• “Congratulations on such an excellent event”.
• “I found the multidisciplinary perspective of the Conference extremely valuable and I’m firmly convinced that tax research should take a multidisciplinary and an international perspective, just as your Conference did, and I enjoyed it very much”
• “Thank you for organising an excellent conference. The wide cross section of research backgrounds was refreshing”.
•  “I enjoyed myself tremendously and have realised that there is much more "crossover" between academe and practice than I previously thought”.

To finalize this multi-disciplinary conference the participants engaged in a roundtable discussion on “Tax Policy Making after Austerity”. The roundtable event, which was led by Penelope included Daniel Lyons (Deloitte), Jennie Rimmer (Aspen) and academics John Snape (Warwick) and Professor Steinmo. The lively discussions were a great opportunity to debate different perspectives held by tax experts both academics and practitioners, from law, economics and accounting in both the public and private sectors.