According to the OECD, corporate taxation has steadily fallen since 1994 and today represents around 8.5 per cent of all taxes raised by governments across the globe. The proliferation of tax-efficient structures that route profits to low tax countries in the form of interest payments and royalties has been a big drain on revenues. The European Commission has made several unfruitful attempts to coordinate ‘anti-avoidance’ measures. In a recent effort to crack down on ‘base erosion and profit shifting’ [BEPS] to safeguard the future of corporate tax and curb competition between Member States based aggressive tax rulings, the European Commission has embarked on a ‘fairness’ crusade using antitrust prerogatives. Apple, Starbucks, Amazon, McDonalds and many more others have been accused of benefiting from illegal State aid resulting in orders to pay (back) billions of euros. Are American companies really being targeted by the European Commission? How will corporate taxation in the European Union evolve from here?

Image

Jacques' State aid experience spans more than two decades, during which time he has acted for beneficiaries, competitors and Member States before the European Commission, EU courts and national courts. He co-directed and co-authored studies for the European Commission on the enforcement of State aid rules at the national level (2006 and 2009), which contributed to the Commission's Recovery and Enforcement Notices in 2007 and 2009 respectively. He co-edited a book on the Enforcement of EU State aid law at national level - 2010 - Reports from the 27 Member States (Lexxion, October 2010), and has written quarterly comments on State aid case law and the Commission’s decisional practice in the journal Concurrences since 2004 (together with EU officials).

Jacques also publishes widely on various other EU constitutional, competition and regulatory issues.  He is a founding member of the Global Competition Law Centre (College of Europe, Scientific Council and Executive Committee). He graduated from the University of Liège (Belgium, 1987) and from the College of Europe (Bruges, 1988), and teaches competition law (State aid aspects) at the University of Liège and at the Brussels School of Competition.

Image

Yaniss has over 15 years of experience in EU Policy, international trade and strategic business development. Yaniss started his career in 2000 in Brussels as an expert advisor on international trade and trade negotiations within the WTO's Doha Development Agenda where he advised governments, corporations and trade associations on a range of intricate political and legal challenges including investment promotion, cultural services and goods, defense contracting an free trade. In 2007, Yaniss joined AHEL, the consulting arm of The International Institute for Strategic Studies in London where he focused on advising F500 companies at executive and board level on geopolitical and military risk, investment policy development. In this role he supported the business expansion of European and US companies in the Far and Near East.

In more recent years Yaniss has worked in senior positions for leading global law firms assisting them with their regional expansion, client development strategies and legal services packaging.

Yaniss holds a JD from the University of Gent, a Masters from UC Berkeley and an MBA from Chicago Booth.

Korea Society president Thomas Byrne, retired General Walter "Skip" Sharp, former U.S. commander in Korea, and Kathleen Stephens, former U.S. ambassador to Korea and William J. Perry Distinguished Fellow in the Korea Program at Stanford's Shorenstein APARC, engage in discussion about the new U.S. president and political, economic and security options on Korea and East Asia.

Panelists:

Thomas J. Byrne joined The Korea Society as its president in 2015. He came to the Society from Moody's Investor Services, where he was Senior Vice President, Regional Manager, Spokesperson, and Director of Analysis for the Sovereign Risk Group in the Asia-Pacific and Middle East regions. Before moving to Moody's in 1996, he was the Senior Economist of the Asia Department at the Institute of International Finance in Washington, D.C. Byrne holds a master’s degree in international relations with an emphasis on economics from the Johns Hopkins’ School of Advanced International Studies. Before his graduate work, he served in South Korea for three years as a U.S. Peace Corps volunteer. He teaches a graduate-level course, Sovereign Risk, at Columbia University’s School of International and Public Affairs in Fall 2016.

General Walter “Skip” Sharp was commander of the United Nations Command, ROK-U.S. Combined Forces Command and U.S. Forces in Korea from 2008 to 2011. He also commanded troops in Operations Desert Shield and Desert Storm, Operation Uphold Democracy in Haiti and the Multinational Division (North) of the NATO-led Stabilization Force in Bosnia. He previously had four assignments at the Pentagon on the Joint Staff. He was the deputy director, J5 for Western Hemisphere/Global Transnational Issues; vice director, J8 for Force Structure, Resources, and Assessment; director for Strategic Plans and Policy, J5; and the director of the Joint Staff.

Born in Morgantown, West Virginia, while his father was fighting in the Korean War, General Sharp graduated from West Point in 1974 and was commissioned as an armor officer.  He earned a master’s degree in operations research and system analysis from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute and is a graduate of the Army War College. He is consulting for and on the board of directors of several U.S. and Korean companies and The Korea Society. He is involved in Northeast Asia and especially Korea strategy and policy discussions at several think tanks in the Washington, D.C. area.

Kathleen Stephens, a former U.S. ambassador to the Republic of Korea, is the William J. Perry Distinguished Fellow in the Korea Program at Stanford’s Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center. She has four decades of experience in Korean affairs, first as a Peace Corps volunteer in rural Korea in the 1970s, and in ensuing decades as a diplomat and as U.S. ambassador in Seoul. She came to Stanford previously as the 2013-14 Koret Fellow after 35 years as a foreign service officer in the U.S. Department of State.

Stephens' diplomatic career includes chargé d’affaires to India in 2014; acting under secretary of state for public diplomacy and public affairs in 2012; U.S. ambassador to the Republic of Korea from 2008 to 2011; principal deputy assistant secretary of state for East Asian and Pacific affairs from 2005 to 2007; and deputy assistant secretary of state for European and Eurasian affairs from 2003 to 2005.

Korea’s economic development trajectory is well known. From an impoverished war-torn nation, the country has progressed on all fronts. In the 1950s the country’s per capita income was estimated to be lower than India’s. Today the income difference is fifteen-fold in favor of Korea. It stands out internationally when it comes to education. Politically it has moved away from authoritarian to more spirited, people-driven democratic system. This presentation will shift the debate to the question what does a country do after it has achieved prosperity. Using the concept of capitalist maturity, do we look for answers in the OECD experience or should we treat Korea on its own terms? What are the development challenges for Korea in the post-development era? Given that there are both external and internal issues that merit appropriate responses, the presentation focuses on Korea’s regional (Asian) economy, business and institutional responses to expanding Asia, and the societal adjustment issues to increasing flows of Asian students, professionals, and unskilled workers. The presentation concludes by briefly indicating the many unfinished domestic reforms at multiple levels, which could reinforce Korea’s external engagement and potentially resolve the development conundrum arising from capitalist maturity.

Image