Robert Couzin, Brian Ernewein, and Finn Poschmann
A Discussion on the Base Erosion and Profit Shifting Tax Initiative
The C.D. Howe Institute’s Annual Jack Mintz Seminar was established in honour of Dr. Jack Mintz’s outstanding achievements in the field of economic and tax policy. Dr. Mintz served as President and CEO of the Institute from 1999 through 2006. The lecture is supported by a dedicated endowment established by his friends and colleagues to commemorate his leadership of the Institute and contribution to Canadian public life.
The 2014 Jack Mintz Seminar was an off-the-record discussion on the base erosion and profit shifting (BEPS) tax initiative. The panel including Robert Couzin, Counsel, Couzin Taylor LLP; Brian Ernewein, General Director, Tax Policy Branch, Finance Canada; and Finn Poschmann, Vice President, Policy Analysis, C.D. Howe Institute discussed what has happened abroad, what in Canada, what might happen, and what the implications are.
Robert Couzin is Counsel and a founding partner of Couzin Taylor LLP, a national tax law firm allied with Ernst & Young LLP in Canada. His practice includes corporate and international tax planning and advisory mandates as well tax controversy and litigation.
Robert holds degrees from the University of Chicago (AB, philosophy; AM, psychology) and the McGill Faculty of Law (BCL), and he recently completed a PhD in art history at the University of Toronto.
His professional activities include having served as chair of the Permanent Scientific Committee of the International Fiscal Association (IFA) and the Taxation Commission of the International Chamber of Commerce, president of the Canadian Branch of IFA, and a governor of the Canadian Tax Foundation. He has lectured in the law faculties of the University of Toronto and McGill University and at the Osgoode Hall Law School. Robert is the author of Corporate Residence and International Taxation and several dozen articles and speeches on international and corporate taxation. He is listed in Chambers Global and other guides to leading tax practitioners.
Brian Ernewein pursued both his undergraduate studies and his legal education at University of Western Ontario in London, Canada, obtaining his law degree from Western in 1983. He joined the Canadian Finance Ministry’s Tax Policy Branch in 1985, following his call to the Ontario Bar. Brian was the Chief of the Corporate and International section of the Finance Ministry’s Tax Legislation Division between 1990 and 1997, was made Senior Chief of the Division in 1997, Director in 1998, and General Director of the Tax Policy Branch in 2006.
Finn Poschmann graduated in economics from Carleton University in Ottawa in 1986 and is Vice President, Policy Analysis at the C.D. Howe Institute, where he has held a variety of positions since January 1998.
For more than a decade previous, he was at the Parliamentary Research Branch in Ottawa, where he held a number of research positions principally involved with providing economic analysis and advice to Parliamentarians and Standing Committees.
He has worked in numerous areas within the field of economics, but has primarily been concerned with public finance and taxation and federal-provincial relations. He is particularly interested in the distributional impact of taxation and in the use of microsimulation tools in the design of tax policy, but has also worked on monetary policy issues and disparate public policy questions. Recent publications have dealt with public-private partnerships, federal and provincial tax and fiscal issues, the tax treatment of retirement savings, and Canada’s exchange rate policies.
to