Next to its publishing activities, IBFD contributes to academic research and teaching in the field of international, comparative and European 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 objects of the Foundation shall be to organize and maintain a documentation and knowledge centre for the purpose of providing information about and explanation of national and international taxation and the application thereof, as well as promoting the study of taxation in general.”

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

• Research Fellows Program:
  Academics are given the opportunity to undertake substantial research at IBFD’s premises and contribute to and stimulate academic discussions within IBFD. Upon approval of their doctoral subject the research fellows receive a contract for two to two and a half years with their research project fully funded by IBFD. They may devote 80% of their time on their doctoral thesis and 20% on work for IBFD. They receive coaching both by IBFD academic staff and by their doctoral promotor at their home university. Subject to approval, their work will be published in the IBFD doctoral series.

• Research Student Meeting:
  The Academic Department 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. Meetings are held at the IBFD offices in Amsterdam and Kuala Lumpur.

• World Tax Journal:
  The WTJ is a purely scientific journal for the academic community online and in paper on international, comparative and regional taxation and national issues of worldwide importance, covering all taxes both from a legal as well as an economic approach. The journal accommodates learned articles that cannot be placed in other tax journals. All contributions are fully peer reviewed in two stages: first they are subject to an initial internal review, then they undergo a double external and blind review. The two tier editorial board consists of an internal board with IBFD staff and an external board of leading international tax scholars including economists.

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• IBFD Tax Day:
  The Academic Department organizes an annual Moot Court, where research staff members of IBFD Knowledge Center battle out a fictitious case in front of a jury made up of distinguished tax sholars and real supreme court judges. The court briefs and an article on the findings are published in one of the IBFD journals.

• The IBFD Doctoral Series:
  The IBFD Doctoral Series contains those dissertations that make a substantial contribution to the international academic debate.

• Research of IBFD employees:
  Supported by the Academic Department IBFD employees may use 10% of their working time for personal research: writing articles and books and actively participating in teaching.

Furthermore, IBFD has concluded agreements with reputable universities around the world providing them with visiting lecturers for their teaching programmes in international tax law and support for their international tax libraries.