Next to its publishing activities, IBFD contributes to academic research and teaching in the field of comparative and international tax law and offers tax practitioners and scholars a platform for exchanging top-level expertise. IBFD has a long tradition of encouraging academic endeavour, both through its own programme of academic activities and by supporting other academic institutions.

The mission of IBFD Foundation is:

• Gather and manage relevant documentation on international tax law and to make this accessible through IBFD’s international tax Library and Information Centre.
• Perform academic activities in the field of international tax law, through basic research, university teaching and providing an academic platform.
• Support the IBFD in its mission to offer an authoritative portal to cross-border tax expertise

The Academic Council is the platform for academic discussions on international tax law. It fosters scholarly debate on international tax law topics through the following activities:

• Visiting Research Scholar Program:
  Academics are given the opportunity to undertake substantial research at IBFD’s premises and contribute to and stimulate academic discussions within IBFD.
• Research Student Meeting:
  The Academic Council organizes an annual meeting of students involved in tax research at the doctoral level. There the students discuss their research with colleagues and experts in their own field. The IBFD Doctoral Series contains those dissertations that make a substantial contribution to the international academic debate.
• Seminar on Global Warming and Taxation at IFA Congress 2008:
  Global warming has been top of the agenda for many conferences, but has never really been discussed at tax conferences. Yet tax instruments have been proposed as part of the solutions to global warming. This observation raises the issue of whether tax can, or should, be used as an instrument to control climate change, or whether market forces, such as steep increases in oil prices, are more effective. These questions will be at the core of the debate in this seminar.

Furthermore, IBFD works closely together with many respectable universities around the world and our research staff provides them with visiting lecturers on a regular basis.

• Joanna Wheeler, Chair (IBFD, Senior Visiting Fellow, Queen Mary College, University of London);
• Prof. Hugh Ault (Boston College School of Law);
• Prof. Huub Bierlaagh (IBFD and Sorbonne University, Paris);
• Prof. Kees van Raad (University of Leiden);
• Prof. María Teresa Soler Roch (University of Alicante);
• Prof. Wim Wijnen (IBFD and LUISS University, Rome)