On 9 March, ITIC President Daniel Witt and Senior Advisor Douglas Townsend attended a roundtable discussion in London on Reforming the tax system in Ukraine: Defining a roadmap to improve the business climate, sponsored by EY, Adam Smith Conferences, and the UK TaxPayers’ Alliance. The roundtable, chaired by ITIC Board member Chris Sanger (Global Head of Tax Policy, EY) featured keynote presentations by the renowned economist Arthur Laffer and Ms. Nina Iuzhanina, who chairs the Verkhovna Rada’s Tax and Customs Policy Committee in Ukraine.

The roundtable discussed the potential of tax reform to help ameliorate (if not reverse) Ukraine’s precarious economic state. The consensus of the discussion was that the December 2015 tax reform would fall short; that further tax reform would be inescapable; and that it must be part of wider public policy reforms if real progress were to be achieved.