This past week, six of the Cambridge.tax group attended the Institue for Fiscal Studies / European Tax Policy Forum conference “ETPF/IFS Conference: BEPS and Beyond”. The conference was very well run and we gained some insight on the difficulty in identifying and sourcing intangible assets. 
This is a candid photo of Chris Jenkins and Matteo Mantovani, PhD students in Law, on the tube en-route to the event.
Today the Cambridge Centre for Tax Law put on a spectacular 1-day conference on the role of judges in developing the context of tax law. The presenters and discussants provided some exceptional presentations and commentary on a range of topics. Dominic de Cogan did an excellent job of organizing this inaugural event. Chris Jenkins provided a thoughtful presentation on the role of judges in influencing tax outcomes. Ewa Plesnar presented a poster on tax and human rights. And Matteo Mantovani presented a poster on VAT and BEPs.
Below is a summary of the conference outline:
10.00-10.30am: Registration and tea/coffee
10.30-11.15am: John Avery Jones (Pump Court/UT/FTT), ‘Is tax all the same?’
Chair: John Snape (Warwick)
Discussant: Judge Colin Bishopp (President, FTT)
Discussant: Judge Roger Berner (UT)
11.15-11.50am: Tobias Franz (Münster), ‘The General Anti-Abuse Rule proposed by the European Commission’
Discussant: Christiana HJI Panayi (QMUL)
1.50am-12.10pm: Tea/coffee break
12.10-12.45pm: Chris Jenkins (Cambridge), ‘Implied terms and taxation’
Chair: Judith Freedman (Oxford)
Discussant: Johann Hattingh (Cape Town)
12.45-1.45pm: Lunch
1.45-2.30pm: Judge Malcolm Wallis (Supreme Court of Appeal of SA), ‘Is tax really different’
Chair: Judith Freedman (Oxford)
Discussant: Sir Stephen Oliver QC (Retired president, FTT)
2.30-2.50pm: Tea/coffee break
2.50-3.25pm: Stephen Daly (Oxford), ‘Judicial review and tax exceptionalism: recent trends’
Chair: Penelope Tuck (Birmingham)
Discussant: Hans Gribnau (Leiden/Tilburg)
3.25-4.10pm: Kristin Hickman (Minnesota), ‘Treasury’s Retroactivity’
Discussant: Dominic de Cogan (Cambridge)
4.10-4.30pm: Closing discussion
May Hen, Dr Garrick Hileman (Cambridge Centre for Alternative Finance) and I travelled to Ferrara to speak at the workshop, Taxation in the Digital Age: Bitcoin and other Cryptocurrencies. The workshop was held at the Rovigo campus of the University of Ferrara on April 12.
Taxation in the Digital Age brought together researchers with a diverse range of academic backgrounds. Dr Antonella Magliocco from the Bank of Italy described some of the legal challenges faced by European tax authorities relating to trade in Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies. Garrick presented his recent paper, The Bitcoin Market Potential Index. This paper describes the potential of Bitcoin and related tehnologies to reduce financial transactions costs, with particular focus on emerging economies where these costs are currently very high. May’s presentation looked at how Bitcoin and other Cryptocurrencies are being used as stores of hidden wealth, and how they compare with traditional mechanisms for wealth storage including art and real estate. My presentation considered how digital monies including Bitcoin can be compared with traditional bank money and cash in the context of the economic theory of money as memory.
Special thanks to Prof. Marco Greggi for inviting us and hosting this excellent workshop.
Alfred Duncan
Cambridge Tax Discussion Group 