William Byrnes' Tax, Wealth, and Risk Intelligence

The Director of Siberian Federal University, Irina Shisko and Head of the Comparative Law Department jointly wrote: “We received excellent feedback from the students concerning your course of lectures and three or four of them would like to get your advice to study International Tax Law in the future. “ …

“We thank you kindly for the brilliant presentation in the plenary session of the international conference, which certainly brightened up our forum”, they continued.

Professor William Byrnes recently returned from a week in Krasnoyarsk, Siberia (Russia) wherein he presented an international tax and investments course at the Siberian Federal University Law Institute, and led a two-hour faculty workshop on distance education.  In between his lecture schedule, he made three conference appearances.

At the Siberian Comparative Law Department Conference on Constitutionalism, William Byrnes delivered a talk on the topic of “DTAs, TIEA, IGAs and the U.S. Constitution.  Exploring the Executive / Senate Treaty authority, House of Representative “Origination” of Tax authority, and Congressional Regulation of Commerce with Foreign Nations authority”.  For the opening of the Siberian Tax Conference, William Byrnes addressed the scope and procedures of financial information exchange about tax matters between Russian and the USA in the context of the current negotiation for an intergovernmental agreement to resolve Russian firms’ challenges of compliance with Russian law and that of the US’ new FATCA financial information gathering regime.   Finally, William Byrnes sat on a two hour afternoon tax panel discussing appropriate transfer pricing methodologies to apply to complex multinational transactions and value added chains.

William Byrnes said of the events: “All the professors, students, government officials from Siberia and Moscow, and attorneys from the prestigious Russian law firm Pepeliaev that I met were very warm and accommodating.  I spent many dining hours in discussions on topics as diverse as learning theory to Eastern Orthodox ethos.  I heard many intriguing viewpoints, reminding me that there are often several perspectives of an issue outside of the US norms.”

William Byrnes responded about his approach to teaching: “For the international tax lectures, I provided context and captivated interest by employing case studies of Apple, Google and Starbucks from which to examine a series of issues.  Leveraging company reports, videos, Congressional and Parliamentary testimony, articles and selections from my books, students are able to obtain a variety of perspectives of the companies’ activities and a deep understanding of select issues.”

“I was impressed by the high quality of the facilities at Siberian Federal University, including state-of-the-industry smart-boards and multimedia in each classroom, as well as the attentiveness and engagement of the students and the faculty during and after lectures.  The university library with more than two million English volumes in print, and its Sciences department equipment has high resolution electron microscope equipment that rivals University of California, San Diego (UCSD).”

William Byrnes concluded: “By invitation of Dr. Dennis Weber, renown European Union tax expert, I am being hosted at the end of October by Moscow Finance University in cooperation with University of Amsterdam’s Tax Center to engage in similar topic matter at a series of workshops.  I look forward to building on the discussions that originated at Siberia Federal University in this regard.”