Global Tax 50 2015: Mauricio Cardenas

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 2015: Mauricio Cardenas

Minister of finance and public credit, Colombia; chairman, Intergovernmental Group of Twenty Four on International Monetary Affairs and Development

Mauricio Cardenas

Mauricio Cardenas is a new entry this year

Mauricio Cardenas is the architect of Colombia's latest tax reform, which is set to be enacted during 2016.

The 53 year old, who worked as minister of mines and energy for a year before becoming Colombia's minister of finance and public credit in 2012, and also briefly held the business-friendly minister of economic development role in the 1990s, announced Colombia's intention to undergo a "structural reform" of its tax system late last year.

The government worked with an expert commission to produce a report on the necessary elements of the reform.

"With those elements, with that input, we will create a dialogue with all the involved sectors and be able to present a structural tax reform law in March of next year [2016]," said Cardenas on November 9.

Crude oil is by some distance Colombia's largest export, and the South American country has been hit hard by low prices – which show no signs of recovering as we begin 2016. This also affects the country's ability to exchange foreign currencies. Before beginning to fall in 2013, the Colombian peso had been one of the best-performing currencies in the developing world, rising 65% in value in the previous decade.

The country's need for tax reform is therefore urgent, and it is hoped that the reform will make up for an expected $9 billion in lost revenue by 2020.

Cardenas says that the upcoming reforms are about broadening and shoring up the tax base, with a focus on "making sure our tax system deals in a more effective way with tax evasion, widens the tax base… so that it's not just a few corporations and individuals that take most of the tax burden".

Through his chairmanship of the Intergovernmental Group of Twenty Four on International Monetary Affairs and Development, Cardenas further exerted his influence in 2015 by helping to coordinate the position of developing countries on international monetary issues and forge a stronger, more vocal presence for developing countries during international discussions.

The Global Tax 50 2015

View the full list and introduction

The top 10 • Ranked in order of influence

1. Margrethe Vestager

2. Pascal Saint-Amans

3. Wang Jun

4. Arun Jaitley

5. Marissa Mayer

6. Will Morris

7. Ian Read

8. Pierre Moscovici

9. Donato Raponi

10. Global Alliance for Tax Justice

The remaining 40 • In alphabetic order

Brigitte Alepin

Andrus Ansip

Tamara Ashford

Mohammed Amine Baina

Piet Battiau

Elise Bean

Monica Bhatia

David Bradbury

Winnie Byanyima

Mauricio Cardenas

Allison Christians

Rita de la Feria

Marlies de Ruiter

Judith Freedman

Meg Hillier

Vanessa Houlder

Kim Jacinto-Henares

Eva Joly

Chris Jordan

Jean-Claude Juncker

Alain Lamassoure

Juliane Kokott

Armando Lara Yaffar

Liao Tizhong

Paige Marvel

Angela Merkel

Zach Mider

Richard Murphy

George Osborne

Achim Pross

Akhilesh Ranjan

Alan Robertson

Paul Ryan

Tove Maria Ryding

Magdalena Sepulveda Carmona

Lee Sheppard

Parthasarathi Shome

Robert Stack

Mike Williams

Ya-wen Yang

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