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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

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