Annual Report on Taxation Event 2024

Building strong foundations for growth: EU Tax Policy for lasting prosperity 

The event will start with a presentation of the new Annual Report on Taxation.

This will be followed by two panel discussions. 

The first panel will address the job market of tomorrow and how taxation can help to address labour and skill shortages? Among others it will answer the following questions:

How can policy makers address labour and skill shortages that hinder competitiveness? Can the design of taxation contribute to higher employment rates? Is there a role for taxation to ensure a smoother transition from education and training to employment, especially for young people? Can taxation support necessary periods of reskilling in a fast-changing job market? Is there a role for taxes in supporting longer working lives? 

In the second panel we will discuss about tax compliance costs and their impact. Among others it will answer the following questions:

How does the EU compare to other advanced economies? What policy lessons can we learn from recent simplification attempts?

Register here

Please note that the number of onsite spaces is limited. On this basis the European Commission reserves the right to refuse requests for onsite participation.

Programme

14:00 - 14:10 

Welcome 

14:10 - 14:30 

Presentation of the 2024 Annual Report on Taxation (ART)  

14:30 - 15:30 

First panel: Shaping the jobs of tomorrow – How to leverage taxation to help address labour and skill shortages? 

• Charles Vellutini, Senior Economist in the Fiscal Affairs Department of the IMF
• Lidia Cruces, Assistant Professor of Economics at Goethe University Frankfurt
• Joanna Tyrowicz, Professor of Economics at University of Warsaw and co-founder of research center FAME|GRAPE

15:30 - 15:50

Coffee Break 

15:50 - 16:50

Second Panel: Tax compliance costs - How high are they, what is their impact and how can they be reduced? 

• Nadia Novik, World Bank, Private Sector Development Specialist, Topic Lead of the Taxation team of the B-READY project
• Andreas Koutoupis, Professor of Financial Accounting & Risk Based Auditing, University of Thessaly, Greece

16:50 - 17:00

Closing remarks by Gerassimos Thomas, Director-General Taxation and Customs Union

Speakers

Charles Vellutini is a senior economist in the Fiscal Affairs Department of the IMF. He has advised governments on tax policy and trade for over 15 years. He has assisted on improvements on the personal income tax, the VAT, SME taxation, tax expenditures and other tax policy topics. His research has covered the redistributive capacity of taxation, tax policy in fragile states and general equilibrium analysis of tax policy. He has consulted for the European Commission and the World Bank and taught at Toulouse School of Economics. He is a graduate from HEC Paris and earned his Ph.D. in economics from Université Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne.
Lidia Cruces is an Assistant Professor at Goethe University Frankfurt. She earned her PhD from the University of Carlos III in 2023. Her research focuses on family economics, gender economics, labor economics, and public policy. Besides her academic work, she is a board member of the European Association of Young Economists (EAYE), which aims to promote interactions among young, non-tenured researchers in economics.
Joanna Tyrowicz is a Professor of Economics at University of Warsaw and co-founder of research center FAME|GRAPE. She is also an IZA Research Fellow (Bonn). She earned her PhD in Economics in 2006 at Faculty of Economics, University of Warsaw, she also holds a degree from Katholike Universiteit Leuven. Between 2007 and 2017 she served as an Economic Advisor at Economic Institute of National Bank of Poland, specializing in labor market and household issues. As of 2022 she is serving on Monetary Policy Council. She worked at IAAE in Trier and IOS in Regensburg. She has been a consultant to The World Bank, OECD and the European Commission. She was a Fulbright Scholar at Columbia University, and a Mellon Fellow at the Netherlands Institute for Advanced Studies.
Nadia Novik is the Topic Lead of the Taxation team within the Business Ready (B-READY) project at the World Bank. Prior to her current role, she led the Financial Services team in the same project at the time of its initial development. Mrs. Novik joined the World Bank in 2013, working on the Doing Business project, where she covered the Starting a Business and the Paying Taxes Indicators before taking on the role of leading the Getting Credit – Credit Information indicator.
Dr. Andreas G. Koutoupis currently works as a Full Professor of Financial Accounting and Risk Based Auditing at the department of Accounting and Finance, University of Thessaly, Larissa-Greece. His research interests includes Accounting & Financial Reporting, Auditing, Internal Auditing, Internal Controls, Enterprise Risk Management and Corporate Governance.