Global Tax 50 2014: Robert Stack

International Tax Review is part of Legal Benchmarking Limited, 1-2 Paris Garden, London, SE1 8ND

Copyright © Legal Benchmarking Limited and its affiliated companies 2025

Accessibility | Terms of Use | Privacy Policy | Modern Slavery Statement

Global Tax 50 2014: Robert Stack

US deputy assistant secretary for international tax affairs

Robert Stack

Robert Stack is a new entry this year

Robert Stack has defied convention. National tax officials have been disappointingly reticent throughout the BEPS project. Taxpayers have been desperate to know their reaction to international tax reform proposals so they can plan for the changes, but tax agencies have been reluctant to talk. While ministers have been in the spotlight at various G20 meetings during 2014, their officials have hung back. Stack, the deputy assistant secretary for international tax affairs at the US Treasury has taken a different approach. Throughout the year, but particularly since the first set of BEPS reports was released in September, he has appeared at conferences, including at International Tax Review's Global Transfer Pricing Forum in Washington, made statements, contributed to web seminars and spoken to the media to explain where the US stands on the issues that have been addressed already and those that will be discussed over the coming year.

The US will lose revenue if international tax rules are tilted away from being residence-based to methods that consider source first. That has not stopped Stack from appearing in public in an effort to ensure everyone knows where the US stands. The depiction by some that the US is against everything the G20/OECD is trying to achieve in the BEPS project is not correct.

One of Stack's targets during the year has been the so-called cash box where taxpayers keep a large amount of money in tax havens to escape their own country's tax rules.

"We [tax administrators] feel comfortable where we are – defending the ALS [arm's-length standard] – but I do think it's a service to the rest of the US community to show you where the pressures in BEPS that you're reading about comes in," he told the Washington conference.

"So now what do the tax administrations need to do and how can the policy makers respond? The tax administrators can at least say, number one, give us a little more transparency because... if I see a company with 80% of their profits in Bermuda but 80% of their sales in high tax countries, as a tax administrator I think, 'I'm going to take a closer look at that guy'."

Stack has made sure everyone knows the US is fully engaged in international tax policy development.

The Global Tax 50 2014

View the full list and introduction

Gold tier (ranked in order of influence)

1. Jean-Claude Juncker  2. Pascal Saint-Amans  3. Donato Raponi  4. ICIJ  5. Jacob Lew  6. George Osborne  7. Jun Wang  8. Inverting pharmaceuticals  9. Rished Bade  10. Will Morris


Silver tier (in alphabetic order)

Joaquín AlmuniaAppleJustice Patrick BoyleCTPAJoe HockeyIMFArun JaitleyMarius KohlTizhong LiaoKosie LouwPierre MoscoviciMichael NoonanWolfgang SchäubleAlgirdas ŠemetaRobert Stack


Bronze tier (in alphabetic order)

Shinzo AbeAlberto ArenasPiet BattiauMonica BhatiaBitcoinBonoWarren BuffettECJ TranslatorsEurodadHungarian protestorsIndian Special Investigation Team (SIT)Chris JordanArmando Lara YaffarMcKessonPatrick OdierOECD printing facilitiesPier Carlo PadoanMariano RajoyNajib RazakAlex SalmondSkandiaTax Justice NetworkEdward TroupMargrethe VestagerHeinz Zourek

more across site & shared bottom lb ros

More from across our site

Reckitt Benckiser is to divest its Essential Home business, which includes more than 70 brands, to private equity firm Advent International
In the first of a new series of weekly opinion pieces, ITR Editor Tom Baker reflects on the OECD’s attempts to sanitise the US’s brazen pillar two negotiations
The threat of 50% tariffs on Brazilian goods coincides with new Brazilian legal powers to adopt retaliatory economic measures, local experts tell ITR
The country’s chancellor appears to have backtracked from previous pillar two scepticism; in other news, Donald Trump threatened Russia with 100% tariffs
In its latest G20 update, the OECD also revealed tense discussions with the US where the ‘significant threat’ of Section 899 was highlighted
The tax agency has increased compliance yield from wealthy individuals but cannot identify how much tax is paid by UK billionaires, the committee also claimed
Saffery cautioned that documentation requirements in new government proposals must be limited if medium-sized companies are not exempted from TP
The global minimum tax deal is not viable without US participation, Friedrich Merz has argued
Section 899 of the ‘one big beautiful’ bill would have spelled disaster for many international investors into the US, but following its shelving, attention turns to the fate of the OECD’s pillars
DLA Piper’s co-head of tax for the US and Latin America tells ITR about her fervent belief in equal access to the law, loving yoga, and paternal inspirations
Gift this article