Recent decades have witnessed structural changes in the way production is organized. Trade and investment liberalization together with technological developments, notably in transport and communications, have substantially reduced trade and foreign investment costs and enabled global value chains, supported by global finance, to proliferate. As a result, trade, foreign investment, financial flows, and cross-border data flows grew rapidly until the financial crisis hit in 2007. In the aftermath of the crisis, trade and investment growth leveled off while growth in cross-border data flows continued unabated. Post the financial crisis the most significant economic development is the rise of the technology sector and the role of digital platforms. The Covid-19 crisis has further acerbated the role of digital platforms in the economy.
Location of production and investment is partly driven by taxation and differences in taxation across jurisdictions. At the same time changes in trade and investment, patterns raise new challenges for tax policy both in relation to tax revenue and for taxes as an instrument for social and environmental sustainability. Thus, taxes, trade, investment, finance, and data are intertwined, and the policy implications of recent developments are best understood when bringing together insights from trade, investment, finance, and tax policy analysis from an economic, legal, and political science perspective.
Against this backdrop, this workshop series will comprise four sessions in which a selected group of participants will discuss accepted sources of interpretation in public international law, services trade, and the technical issues that concern experts in each field as well as the existent judicial discussions, and the role of tax incentives for investment in the context the digitalization of the economy. The workshop series will close with a final event, where a high-level panel will dig deeper into the policy implications of the topics discussed throughout the first four sessions.
Participants
This workshop series will bring together a broad range of stakeholders including academics in the tax, investment, and trade fields; regional and international organizations; government officials as well as members of civil society to discuss challenges and potential synergies as well as explore policy priorities in these three fields.
Registration
To join one or more sessions of the workshop please register using the following link: https://fd24.formdesk.com/universiteitleiden/registration-trade-tax-investment/
If you have any questions or if you would like to withdraw your registration, please send an e-mail to globtaxgov@law.leidenuniv.nl.