Global Tax 50 2015: Judith Freedman

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: Judith Freedman

Professor of tax law, Oxford University; Director of legal research, Oxford University Centre for Business Taxation

Judith Freedman

Judith Freedman is a new entry this year

Judith Freedman is another Global Tax 50 entrant from the world of academia. She is the legal director at what fellow academic entrant, Rita de la Feria, describes as "probably the world's most influential centre on tax policy" – the Oxford University Centre for Business Taxation (CBT).

A regular speaker and event organiser, Freedman is primarily an academic but works with law firm Pinsent Masons through her work at Oxford, where she helped to set up the CBT.

The CBT celebrated its 10th anniversary in summer 2015 and will break new ground in the year ahead, after it announced a new MSc master's course in taxation which will welcome its first students during 2016.

Freedman is also a research fellow at the Institute for Fiscal Studies and a member of the Tax Law Review Committee and Tax Research Network steering group, as well as holding editorial or editorial board positions at numerous tax publications and journals.

Freedman was also involved in the setting up, in summer 2015, of a network for women working across the tax profession, bringing together 'women in tax' from advisory, in-house, academic and tax authority backgrounds. The group had its official launch event in November – at which Freedman spoke on the topic 'What do we mean by a fair tax system' – and organises monthly breakfasts, skills development workshops and more. The establishment of such an organisation is long overdue.

From a wider angle, her importance – and the importance of tax academics in general – to the market should not be understated. Academia is an opportunity to provide a broad, external perspective on important tax issues and give impartial, critical analysis to issues, legislation and trends which active practitioners can be too ingrained in, or too busy, to provide an objective view on.

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