Global Tax 50 2015: Mike Williams

Mike Williams is a new entry this year

Mike Williams is a tax veteran who plays an important role in guiding the UK's international tax policy, but he will have jumped onto even more people's radars when he was appointed as the chairman of the BEPS Action 15 working group for the development of a multilateral instrument.

The ad hoc working group – which was created on May 27 2015, before the final BEPS deliverables were released – will be responsible for drafting the multilateral instrument for implementing BEPS around the world. This will essentially involve putting together treaty amendment rules to facilitate countries in implementing treaty-related BEPS recommendations.

Williams' three vice-chairs in the group are Mohammed Amine Baina of Morocco, China's Liao Tizhong and Kim Jacinto-Henares of the Philippines, all of whom feature in this year's Global Tax 50 list. While each of these figures performed influential roles outside of their Action 15 work over the past year, this showing is testament to the importance of the ad hoc group's work.

The working group has been signed up to by more than 90 countries. The agreement by OECD countries to sign up to a multilateral instrument to modify tax treaties was one of the pivotal aspects of the BEPS Project, and the group will now work to create the instrument capable of modifying the world's 3,500+ bilateral tax treaties.

Williams will need to show strong leadership; the working group has a tough timetable to adhere to, with negotiations on the instrument scheduled to be finished by the end of 2016.

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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