Season's Greetings

Dear Member,

2019 has been another eventful year for tax advisors and practitioners, with significant legislative developments, such as the Tax Consolidation rules, ATAD, and the transposition of the VAT “quick fixes” which will be effective on 1 January 2020.

As an Institute, we have striven to keep our members and subscribers up to date on legislative updates with the introduction of The MIT Weekly. This was launched alongside our redesigned website at www.maintax.org, which offers more functionality for users, as well as an enhanced Members’ Area which contains materials on tax and VAT matters for our members. I trust that you have found these helpful and informative, and will continue to find value in the materials that we generate. One of the Institute’s objectives is to assist members in maintaining the required levels of technical know-how and to provide a forum within which members can share their know-how and experience on practical issues and the Council, Committees, management and support staff have worked tirelessly towards this aim.

On educational matters, we have held various seminars and workshops on topical local and international tax issues.  Besides our popular academic courses, the MIT Course on Taxation and the MIT Course on Tax Compliance, this year we introduced two new courses: the MIT Advanced Course on International Tax Law and the MIT Advanced Course on VAT. These advanced-level, interactive courses consisting of 6 sessions each, were designed for participants who already have a good knowledge of the subject matter but who wished to gain more in-depth understanding of the rules and principles, and offered a forum for peer-to-peer discussion. We are currently working on our seminar calendar for 2020, which will offer a number of tax seminars and workshops at all levels.

In 2019 we held two events in our Masterclass Series, the first on the Controlled Foreign Company Rules and the second on the ATAD II Anti-Hybrid rules, and were honoured to have distinguished international speakers like Prof. Alexander Rust from the University of Vienna and John Petersen, Head of ATP at the OECD. A technical paper outlining the discussion points and outcome of each Master Class is available to members in the Members Area of our website.

Once again, the Institute’s Annual Tax Conferencewas a great success, with a line-up of leading local and international speakers, including, Maikel Evers, Advisor to the OECD CTPA, Raffaele Petruzzi, Managing Director of the Transfer Pricing Centre at the Institute for Austrian and International Tax Law, and Jasper Korving from the Deloitte Netherlands Tax Research Department.

2019 was an eventful and productive year for the MIT, and we continue to set ambitious targets with the sole purpose of driving value to our members.

I would like to thank my fellow Council members, the Chairpersons of the various Committees, as well as the members who sit thereon, who place themselves at the disposal of the Institute, dedicating time and experience to the events, activities and publications of the Institute, as well as the CTO and the office team. I would also like to take this opportunity to thank George Portanier, the Institute’s outgoing CEO, for his dedication and commitment to the Institute over the past few years and to formally welcome Fiona Vassallo, our new CEO.

We thank you for your membership of the Institute, and we look forward to another year of work toward the promotion of education and dialogue on tax matters. In the meantime, I wish you, and your families, a peaceful Christmas and all the very best for 2020.

Conrad Cassar Torregiani

President