Staff

Frans Vanistendael is the Academic Chairman of IBFD. He has been a professor of Taxation since 1972 at the Law faculty of the K.U. Leuven, Belgium; director of the European Tax College since 2000; and he was a member of the Brussels bar from 1974 up to 2008. He is the Vice-Chairman of the European Association of Tax Law Professors as well as a member of the permanent scientific committee of the International Fiscal Association. He is also editor-in-chief of the World Tax Journal.  He is the founding editor of the former ECJ Direct Tax Case Law online collection and the IBFD Tax Travel Companion series.
 

Prof. Vanistendael was the founder and first president of the European Law Faculties Association (1995-1997) and dean of the Law faculty at the K.U. Leuven (1999-2005). He was a visiting professor in Auckland, Sydney, Monash (Melbourne), Kansai (Osaka), Bologna and LUISS Rome. He was also adviser to several ministers of finance in Belgium; Royal Commissioner of Tax Reform (1987); Member of the High Council of Finance (1981-2000); Member of the Ruding Committee on Corporate Tax Harmonisation in the EU (1991-1992); and consultant with the OECD and the IMF on tax reform in Eastern-Europe, Central Asia and China, and with the European Commission. He has written more than 400 books and articles on a wide range of tax subjects. 

Wim Wijnen is Counsel to the Academic Chairman of IBFD. He is also a teacher of International Tax Law at Libera Università Internazionale degli Studi Sociali in Rome, Italy; and a part-time judge of the Court of Appeal of ‘s-Hertogenbosch, the Netherlands. His previous experience includes: working as a tax inspector in the Dutch tax administration; heading the Bilateral Affairs Division of the International Fiscal Affairs Department of the Dutch Ministry of Finance and being employed at Loyens and Volkmaars in Rotterdam. Prior to his current positions, Mr Wijnen also worked as head of the IBFD research staff and, in that capacity, was also a member of the Board of Directors of IBFD. He is also editor-in-chief of the Tax Treaty Case Law Database. For his extensive contribution to the development of international tax law he has been appointed Officer of the Order of Oranje-Nassau. He is also one of the Executive Directors of the International Association of Tax Judges.

Joanna Wheeler  is Senior Principal Associate at the IBFD Academic Department. Previously, she was editor of many different IBFD publications, and the founding editor of IBFD’s database on trusts. Ms Wheeler pioneered IBFD's programme of online courses; before that she designed a number of classroom courses and taught regularly in classroom courses for IBFD's International Tax Academy. She gives regular guest seminars for the universities of Cambridge, Leiden, London (Queen Mary College) and Neuchatel. Ms Wheeler was a member of the Research Subcommittee of the International Fiscal Association (IFA) for many years; and acted as general reporter for the IFA Congress held in Kyoto in 2007 on the topic “Conflicts in the Attribution of Income to a Person”. She has received her doctorate from the University of Amsterdam for her PhD thesis, under the supervision of Prof. Stef van Weeghel, on the attribution of income to a person for treaty purposes. Her thesis has been published by IBFD under the title "The Missing Keystone of Income Tax Treaties".

 

Richard Resch is Principal Academic Associate of the IBFD Academic Department and Assistant to the Academic Chairman. He is also managing editor of the World Tax Journal. He is also a founding editor of the ECJ Direct Tax Case Law Database and the IBFD Tax Travel Companion series, and contributor to Commentary on the US-German Income Tax Convention.

 

Previously, he worked for IBFD as Senior Research Associate in the European Knowledge Group and has also taught regularly at IBFD's International Tax Academy. He has a postgraduate degree in Business Studies from the London School of Economics and an LLM in International Taxation from the Vienna University of Economics and Business Administration. Prior to his employment at IBFD, Mr Resch gained experience working for several German tax advisory companies responsible for their international tax law matters, a globally established business consultancy and a German public policy think tank.