The future of corporate taxation in a digital world

Speaker Biographies

Itai Grinberg is a law professor at Georgetown University Law Center and a member of Georgetown’s Institute of International Economic Law. He is a term member of the Council on Foreign Relations and serves on the Journal of International Economic Law’s editorial board. He has testified before the US Congress and the German Bundestag and has acted as an outside academic tax expert for the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), the Inter-American Development Bank, and the Asian Development Bank. Previously, he served in the Office of International Tax Counsel at the US Department of the Treasury, where he represented the US on tax matters in multilateral settings, negotiated tax treaties with foreign sovereigns, had responsibility for a wide-ranging group of cross-border tax regulations, and was involved in international tax legislative efforts. He also worked on every aspect of the Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act and was the US official charged with reinvigorating the OECD’s Global Forum on Transparency and Exchange of Information for Tax Purposes. He also practiced law as an attorney in the tax group at Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom LLP. In 2005, he served as counsel to the President’s Advisory Panel on Federal Tax Reform.

William Morris is deputy global tax policy leader at PwC, which he joined in April 2017. He chairs the European Tax Policy Forum, a registered UK charity that since 2005 has commissioned more than 45 papers from leading academic economists about business tax issues. He is also chair of the AmCham EU Tax Committee and is a member of the clergy team at St. Martin-in-the-Fields in London. After private practice in London and Washington, DC, he joined the IRS in 1995. Then he moved to the Office of Tax Policy at the US Treasury in January 1997 to work on international tax policy. He was the associate international tax counsel until March 2000, when he joined General Electric (GE), first in Fairfield, Connecticut, then in London, where he coordinated GE’s global tax policy program. Mr. Morris was appointed chair of the Business and Industry Advisory Committee Tax Committee to the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development in November 2012. From May 2010 until July 2016, he was chair of the Confederation of British Industry Tax Committee. He has degrees in history, law, and theology from Trinity College Cambridge, the University of Virginia, and St. Mellitus College, respectively.

Pierre Moscovici is the commissioner for Economic and Financial Affairs, Taxation and Customs. As commissioner, he is in charge of applying the Stability and Growth Pact; ensuring the economic soundness of commission proposals; deepening the Economic and Monetary Union of the European Union to create the conditions for jobs, growth, and investment; and encouraging further structural reforms. On taxation matters, he is responsible for developing a value-added tax system at the EU level, improving the functioning of the internal market in both direct and indirect taxation, and fighting tax fraud and tax evasion. His responsibilities also include the development and management of an efficient EU customs union. Previously, he served in the European Parliament and in the French National Assembly, mainly working on economic issues. He has also been minister for European Affairs (1997–2002) and minister for the Economy and Finance (2012–14) in France.

Stephen Quest is the director general for Taxation and Customs Union at the European Commission. He joined the European Commission in 1993. Since then he has held numerous positions across different policy areas, including financial programming and budget of the European Union, environment, and employment and social affairs. Most recently he was director general for Informatics — the commission’s department providing digital solutions to enable European policies and to support the commission’s internal administration — and director of the office that administers and pays the individual financial entitlements of the staff of the European Commission. Before joining the European Commission, he worked for the UK Department of Employment and the UK Permanent Representation to the European Union. He graduated in 1986 from the University of York with a degree in history.

Stan Veuger is a resident scholar at AEI, where his research is in political economy and public finance. He is also the editor of AEI Economic Perspectives. He has been a visiting lecturer of economics at Harvard University and is a fellow at the Center for the Governance of Change at the IE School of International Relations in Madrid. Dr. Veuger’s research has been published in leading academic and professional journals, including the Journal of Monetary Economics, the Quarterly Journal of Economics, and the Review of Economics and Statistics. He is the editor, with Michael Strain, of “Economic Freedom and Human Flourishing: Perspectives from Political Philosophy” (AEI Press, 2016). He also writes frequently for general audiences on economics, politics, and popular culture. His writing has appeared in Foreign Affairs, the Los Angeles Times, The National Interest, The New York Times, and USA Today, among others. Dr. Veuger serves as the chairman of the Washington, DC, chapter of the Netherland-America Foundation. He received a Ph.D. and an A.M. in economics from Harvard and an M.Sc. in economics from Universitat Pompeu Fabra. He completed his undergraduate education at Utrecht University and Erasmus University Rotterdam.

Joann Martens Weiner is an associate professor of economics and the director of the Master of Arts in Applied Economics program at George Washington University (GW). Her research interests center on corporate tax reform, the economics of the European Union, the sharing economy, and applied microeconomics. She is the author of “Company Tax Reform in the European Union: Guidance from the United States and Canada on Implementing Formulary Apportionment in the EU” (Springer, 2006) and numerous articles on economic policy, taxation, and finance. In addition to teaching at GW, she serves as chairman of the board of Community Tax Aid and is a member of the boards of the National Tax Association and of the National Economists Club. Before joining GW, she worked as a senior economist at the US Department of the Treasury and for several news organizations. She earned a Ph.D. and an M.A. in economics from Harvard University and a B.S. in business administration from the University of California at Berkeley.