Speakers

Lotta Björklund Larsen
Linköping University, Sweden
Taxation Through the Eyes of an Anthropologist

Dr Lotta Björklund Larsen is Associate Professor in social anthropology at the Department of Thematic studies: Technology and social change at Linköping University. She researches on taxation and on the increasing impact of algorithms shaping social phenomena – like taxation - applying ethnographic methods. Lotta currently leads the project Co-Producing Compliance: Tax Agencies Mobilization of Citizens, Businesses and Third parties in the Nordic countries funded by an EU H2020 project. Lotta finds the dissemination of results and collaboration with actors on the tax arena important. She is an International Research Fellow at TARC, a member of the Journal of Cultural Economy’s Editorial Board and co-organizes the international Algorithm Studies Network (https://algorithmnetwork.org).

Travis Bush
Senior Manager, EY
Intersection of Big Data, Analytics & the Future of Tax

Travis is a Senior Manager in Tax Technology & Transformation (TTT), a part of EY’s National Tax Department. The TTT group is responsible for developing and implementing custom technology solutions and processes to assist with tax regulatory and compliance matters. Travis is a Capitalization leader within TTT and has extensive experience managing capitalization engagements, including fixed asset system remediations, system migrations and implementations. He is the lead developer of EY’S Cost Recovery Vector Technology.

Anne L. Christensen
President of the American Accounting Association
Montana State University
Pathways to a Sustainable Future

Anne L. Christensen is a Professor of Accounting in the Jake Jabs College of Business & Entrepreneurship at Montana State University, where she has served as Director of the Master of Professional Accountancy Program, Director of the Volunteer Income Tax Assistance (VITA) program, a member of the Graduate Council, and on the University Service Learning Advisory Board. She was previously a member of the faculty at Portland State University. Anne earned her Ph.D. from the University of Utah.

Anne has published in a number of peer-reviewed journals including Issues in Accounting Education, The Journal of the American Taxation Association, ATA Journal of Legal Tax Research, Advances in Accounting Education, Journal of Business Ethics, Financial Accountability and Management, and Advances in Taxation. She has served on Editorial Boards for Issues in Accounting Education, Accounting Horizons, Journal of the American Taxation Association, and Journal of Accounting Education.

Anne is currently serving as the President of the American Accounting Association (AAA). In the past she served as the AAA Director-Focusing on Segments and on AAA’s Sharpening Our Vision Taskforce I and II. She is a member of AAA’s ABO, ATA, and TLC Sections. During her career she served on AAA Council and as President and Program Chair of the Western Region, as President, Vice President, and Trustee of the ATA, as Chair of ATA’s Publication Committee, ATA/Deloitte Teaching Innovation Awards Committee, Accreditation & Curriculum Issues Committee, Awards Committee, and Nominations Committee. She has served on the AAA Strategic Region Leader Committee as Co-Chair, and as a member of the Council Committee on Awards Committee, Deloitte Wildman Award Committee, AAA Journals Task Force, and AAA Nominations Committee.

Anne has twenty-eight years’ teaching experience and has received twelve awards for academic excellence including Montana State University’s President’s Excellence in Teaching Award and President’s Award for Excellence in Service Learning; the College’s Distinguished Faculty Award and Dean’s Award for Outstanding Performance in Service, and the ATA’s Ray M. Sommerfeld Outstanding Tax Educator Award and the ATA Outstanding Service Award.

Christine Griffith
BTS Tax Partner, KPMG
Tax Reform – Impact of Interest Deductibility Rules on US and Non-US Multinationals

Christine is a partner in KPMG’s Houston Tax practice, National Tax Industry Leader – Chemicals, and the Partner in Charge of the US Tax Business School. She has more than 26 years of experience providing corporate, partnership and personal tax services in the areas of federal, state, and international tax consultation and compliance.

Serving as the lead tax partner for a number of Fortune 500 companies, Christine has gained extensive experience in financial accounting for income taxes, tax function leading practices and SOX 404 controls.

Christine is responsible for a broad range of U. S. multi-national and foreign-owned clients doing business as single entities or in joint ventures, and has experience with a wide range of complex tax matters relating to her clients’ businesses. Christine specializes primarily with chemical and energy related companies, including upstream oil and gas companies, refineries, and petrochemical companies. In providing her services to public and private companies, Christine provides extensive knowledge of financial accounting for income taxes. Christine has advised her clients on many transactions and provided tax consulting and compliance services on numerous federal, state and international tax issues, as well as serving as global lead tax partner assisting global engagement teams on financial audits.

Christine is an Area tax resource for stock based compensation issues with regards to financial accounting for income taxes.

Patrick A. Juneau
Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill Claims Administrator
The Deepwater Horizon Claims Process —The Story Behind the Headlines

Appointed in 2012, Patrick is the Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill Claims Administrator.  He is responsible for implementing and administering the U.S. District Court’s Settlement Agreement.  He has led a team of thousands who have received, processed, reviewed, and paid hundreds of thousands of economic and property claims.  Patrick is a Lafayette native and holds a B.A. (Government) and a J.D. from Louisiana State University.  He served actively in the United States Army, attained the Captain rank, and received the Army Commendation Medal.  Patrick has an active law practice and is a member of the Louisiana State Bar Association and the American Bar Association.  He is a past President of the Louisiana Association of Defense Counsel.  As a state and federal designated mediator, he has served in over four thousand (4,000) cases, and served as the court appointed Special Master in numerous cases including the Combustion, Inc., Toyota, Guidant Corp. Implantable Defibrillators, Vioxx Products Liability Litigation, and Avandia.  Patrick is a charter member of the Academy of Court Appointed Masters.  He has served as guest lecturer at the Louisiana State University and Tulane University Law Schools’ Continuing Legal Education programs, and has spoken at seminars on topics such as products, environmental, maritime, professional liability litigation, and mediation.

Erich Kirchler
Professor of Economic Psychology
University of Vienna, Austria.
The Impact of Power and Trust on Taxpayer Behavior

Erich Kirchler obtained his PhD (1973) from the University of Vienna and his Habilitation (1989) from the University of Linz, Austria. He was Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of Economic Psychology and President of Division 9 (Economic Psychology) of IAAP (International Association of Applied Psychology). He was an advisor at the Austrian Science Fund (FWF), president of the International Associations for Research in Economic Psychology (IAREP) and the Austrian Psychological Society (ÖGPs). The major research interest is in household financial decision making and tax behavior. Publications include Conflict and Decision Making in the Private Household (together with Christa Rodler, Erik Hoelzl, Katja Meier; Psychology Press, 2001), The Economic Psychology of Tax Behaviour (Cambridge University Press, 2007), Economic Psychology: An Introduction (together with Erik Hoelzl; Cambridge University Press, 2018) and articles numerous articles in international economics and psychology journals.

Michael D. Kohler
Managing Director – Washington National Tax, Deloitte
Partnership Hot Topics: Update on New Legislation, Regulations, and Other Guidance

Mike is a member of the Deloitte Tax Washington National Tax – Passthroughs Group specializing in the federal taxation of partnerships.  Mike has twelve years of experience providing legal, consulting, compliance, and accounting for income tax services to a variety of clients.

Mike advises clients primarily on questions arising in the formation and operation of various infrastructure and investment funds, including with respect to complicated profit and loss allocations, compensation arrangements, entry and exit of partners, cross-border investments, fund restructuring, tax deferral and planning, as well as transactions involving the acquisition and disposition of portfolio companies.  In particular, Mike has considerable experience in energy tax credits and infrastructure structures, and has represented sponsors, tax equity investors, and major equipment suppliers in these areas.

In addition to his work advising on technical and compliance tax issues, Mike frequently develops and consults on models in Microsoft Excel spreadsheets and other platforms that are used for tax planning, business valuation, and tax compliance purposes.

Mike received his J.D. in 2005 from the Columbia University School of Law, where he also was a member of the Columbia Law Review.  Mike also has a Ph.D. from Johns Hopkins University and an A.B. from Princeton University.

Doug McHoney
Partner, PwC  
Tax Technical - International Tax: General Discussion

Doug is a Principal in PwC’s International Tax Services (ITS) practice in Chicago.  Doug is the national co-leader of the U.S. Integrated Global Structuring practice working with large multinationals on deal structuring and reorganizations.   His experience includes foreign mergers and acquisitions, subpart F planning, foreign tax credit planning, local country tax consulting and tax compliance services. 

Doug is also the national ITS leader for the Retail and Consumer industry sector.  In these roles he provides tax consulting services for acquisitions, dispositions, structuring of tax efficient business models, intellectual property planning, integrated foreign holding companies, and treasury management structures.

Doug is a frequent author and lecturer as well as a member of the Advisory Board for the International Tax Journal.  He has a Bachelor of Science in Accountancy and Juris Doctor from the University of Missouri-Columbia.   He is a member of the American Bar Association (Taxation Section) as well as the bars of the State of Missouri and the State of Illinois. 

Emer Mulligan
National University of Ireland Galway, Ireland
Tax Academia in Ireland and the UK and Recent Tax Research Projects

Dr Emer Mulligan is a lecturer in taxation and finance and former Head of the J.E. Cairnes School of Business & Economics at the National University of Ireland Galway. She is a Fulbright/CRH scholar, and has published in international peer reviewed journals including Accounting, Organisations and Society, Critical Perspectives on Accounting and Advances in Taxation. She is an International Fellow at the University of Exeter’s Tax Administration Research Centre, one of Europe’s leading research centres on tax, and is a member of the Steering Group of the UK-based Tax Research Network. Emer currently leads a research project entitled European Pension Policies and Intergenerational Fiscal Sustainability, Fairness, and Consolidation, which is part of an EU H2020 funded project. Prior to joining academia, Emer was a tax manager at PWC, Dublin, Ireland.

Lynne Oats
University of Exeter, United Kingdom
Alternative Approaches to Tax Research

Professor Lynne Oats joined Exeter Business School in September 2010 having previously held academic posts at the Universities of Warwick, Sheffield Hallam and Curtin University of Technology (Australia). Her research interest is taxation policy and practice in social and institutional context, in both historical and contemporary settings. She has published extensively in the field and is co-author of four books: Taxation Policy and Practice (with Andy Lymer), Principles of International Taxation (with Angharad Miller), Taxation: A Fieldwork Research Handbook and Accounting Principles for Tax Purposes (with Bill Telford). Lynne is Assistant Editor of British Tax Review and Managing Editor of the Journal of Tax Administration. She is Co- Director of the ECRC/HMRC funded Tax Administration Research Centre and is currently also undertaking research funded by the European Union (the FairTax project).

Joel Slemrod
University of Michigan
Tax Experts and Tax Reform

Joel Slemrod is the Paul W. McCracken Collegiate Professor of Business Economics and Public Policy at the Ross School of Business, and Professor in the Department of Economics, at the University of Michigan.  He also serves as Director of the Office of Tax Policy Research, an interdisciplinary research center housed at the Business School. Professor Slemrod received the A.B. degree from Princeton University in 1973 and the Ph.D. in economics from Harvard University in 1980. Before coming to Michigan, he was assistant professor from 1979 to 1985 and associate professor from 1985 to 1987 at the University of Minnesota. In 1983-84 he was a National Fellow at the Hoover Institution and in 1984-85 he was the senior economist for tax policy at the President's Council of Economic Advisers. 

From 1992 to 1998 Professor Slemrod was editor of the National Tax Journal and from 2006 to 2010 was co-editor of the Journal of Public Economics.  In 2005-6, he was president of the National Tax Association and, as of 2015, he is president of the International Institute of Public Finance. He is co-author with Jon Bakija of Taxing Ourselves: A Citizen’s Guide to the Debate over Taxes, now in its fifth edition; with Len Burman of Taxes in America: What Everyone Needs to Know, published in 2012; and with Christian Gillitzer of Tax Systems, published in 2014.  In 2012 he received from the National Tax Association its most prestigious award, the Daniel M. Holland Medal, for distinguished lifetime contributions to the study and practice of public finance. In 2015 he received the Atkinson Award for the best paper published in the Journal of Public Economics over the previous three years.

Ben Stanga
Partner, Federal Tax Services, PwC
Increasing Student Interest in Tax Careers

Serving larger mid-cap companies to Fortune 500 multinational corporations, Ben has over 24 years of experience. With a core expertise in federal corporate tax, Ben’s responsibilities include identification and implementation of planning opportunities, consulting for accounting and controls, assistance with compliance and reporting functions (including audit/controversy support), and management of his clients’ overall relationship with PricewaterhouseCoopers.

Ben received his M.Acc., Taxation and his B.S., Accounting from The University of Tennessee.

Holly D. Thomas
National Director - Tax Strategy and East Region, Campus Recruiting, KPMG
Increasing Student Interest in Tax Careers

Holly started her career in the Audit practice of KPMG’s Atlanta office in 1993. Since she has held various roles with the firm, led a number of national programs and initiatives, and is currently the National Director for Tax Campus Recruiting Strategy and the East Region for Campus Recruiting. In this role, Holly works with the Vice Chair for Tax, the Tax National Managing Partner, the Tax Chief Talent Officer, and other national and regional tax leaders to determine overall campus recruiting strategy for KPMG Tax. As the East Region Director, she oversees the execution of our campus recruiting strategy for audit and tax and manages a team of over 60 fulltime campus recruiting professionals. Holly is also a National instructor for the firm and has served on the executive committee for the Atlanta Chapter of KPMG’s Network of Women.

Holly is active in many different organizations including the American Accounting Association and various sections of the AAA. In July 2013, she was elected to serve on the board for the Federation of Schools of Accountancy. She has worked with several children’s charities in the Atlanta area and chaired fundraising events which raised funds for Children’s Healthcare of Atlanta. Holly was named to the University of Georgia Alumni Association's "40 under 40" which recognizes those who are leading the way in business, research, artistic, leadership, community, educational and/or philanthropic endeavors.

Holly received a Bachelors of Business Administration Degree with an emphasis in accounting, from the University of Georgia in 1993.

Chetan Vagholkar
International Tax Partner, KPMG
Tax Reform – Impact of Interest Deductibility Rules on US and Non-US Multinationals

Chetan is a Partner in KPMG’s International Tax practice and leads the Houston business unit International tax practice. He has more than 23 years of experience assisting companies with their International tax needs.

Chetan specializes in structuring international operations to minimize worldwide taxes and is familiar with the tax implications of cross border transactions, inbound structuring of operations for foreign multinationals, structuring for non-US funds’ investments in the US, planning using financing techniques, foreign tax credit planning for integrated O&G companies, IP migration and local country tax planning.

He has participated in post-merger integration projects for large multinational corporations and his experience includes effective tax rate planning, tax efficient movement of cash, interest expense apportionment, super holding company structures, inbound and outbound financing, inbound and outbound leasing structures,  yieldco  (foreign MLPs) structuring local country tax minimization, debt push down, LNG tax value chain analysis, inversions, inbound freeze structures, supply chain planning and quantitative analysis focused on foreign  tax credit planning. 

He has extensive experience working with three large US multinationals on inversion transactions and led two inversions in the drilling sector. He led cross-border structuring of three multi-billion dollar oil and gas “cash & carry” transactions for an Asian conglomerate.

He has significant experience in Section 861 Interest Expense Appointment (FMV Method) analysis and E&P Studies.  His clients include integrated super major oil and gas companies, various oil field service companies and global chemical companies.

Mike Weber
IRS Statistics of Income Division
Alternative Data Sources

Mike Weber is an economist with the Statistics of Income (SOI) Division of the IRS.  SOI is one of the 13 principal statistical agencies of the Federal government.  Mike has been responsible for the development and production of the SOI Individual Income Tax Return Public-Use File for the past 25 years, as well as SOI’s individual tax return panels and individual information returns data. Mike also leads the bi-annual SOI Joint Statistical Research Program which provides opportunities for outside researchers to submit tax administration focused research proposals to SOI.  If selected, researchers are paired with knowledgeable IRS research staff to execute the project.  Mike holds a B.A. and M.A. in economics from the American University and an MBA from the University of Michigan.

Sam Weiler
Senior Manager, EY
Intersection of Big Data, Analytics & the Future of Tax

Sam is a member of EY’s Quantitative Services group in the National Tax Department. Sam primarily provides federal tax advisory services on capitalization and cost recovery items and issues, the timing provisions governing income and expense recognition, income exclusion provisions of the Internal Revenue Code, like-kind exchange issues, as well as Internal Revenue Service procedures regarding the application of accounting methods and changes in accounting methods and periods. Sam was deeply involved in the development of EY’s Cost Recovery Vector Technology and is a primary tax technical resource for capitalization and cost recovery.