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Global Tax 50 2015: Kim Jacinto-Henares

Commissioner, Philippines Bureau of Internal Revenue; vice-chairwoman, ad hoc group on BEPS Action 15

Kim Jacinto-Henares

Kim Jacinto-Henares is a new entry this year

2015 was a busy year for Kim Jacinto-Henares, commissioner of the Bureau of Internal Revenue in the Philippines. Her country became a member of the global forum on BEPS, it was invited to participate in the work of the Committee on Fiscal Affairs, the OECD group that sets the organisation's tax agenda, and the commissioner became a member of the UN Committee of Tax Experts.

On top of that, she was nominated by her government to be one of the vice-chairpersons of OECD Working Party 15, the group set up to negotiate the multilateral instrument to incorporate the BEPS recommendations into existing bilateral tax treaties.

"Not only were we busy here with domestic revenue mobilisation, but I found myself out of the country a lot," she says.

The commissioner believes agreement on the multilateral instrument will be possible for the 44 countries that participated in the BEPS negotiations, but is not sure about any other jurisdiction.

"All the other countries are not bound by the instrument," she says. "Will other countries agree to it? It won't be a problem for the 44, but there is a lot to be discussed."

She adds that the talks on the multilateral instrument cannot be used to go back over what was agreed by the BEPS working parties: "We fought over every comma, every period. You cannot go back."

The Philippines did not commit to implement anything that emerged from the BEPS process. "We participated on the very clear understanding that we would not be bound by it," says Jacinto-Henares. "We would not have agreed to participate if we were bound. We didn't want to be in the same situation with exchange of information, where an agreement was made and we were bound by it, finding ourselves on blacklists and the like. We don't want to be surprised in the future. This was made very clear to everyone: you made the agreement not us."

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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