“(Your work helps us) to define problems and lay out ways of further perfecting tax
legislation and establishing a favourable investment climate in our country.”
– His Excellency Nursultan Nazarbayev, President of the Republic of Kazakhstan
“ITIC’s very concrete work on the draft tax code chapters has been highly useful
to the Ministry of Finance.”
— The Honorable Sergei Shatalov, First Deputy Minister of Finance, Russian Federation
Welcome to the CIS Program (Russia, Kazakhstan, Azerbaijan, Ukraine) Page
ITIC’s programs in this region began in 1991 with an International Conference, soon
followed by an invitation from the chairman of the Russian State Tax Service and
the Kazakhstan Ministry of Finance for a return visit to discuss the development
of pro-investment, pro-growth tax reforms. From that started in 1991, delegations
of Western business executives, economists and government officials visited Moscow
at the invitation of the Government. Then Deputy Secretary of the U.S. Treasury
John Robson was an early visitor, and in July of 1992, Congressman Bill Frenzel
led a delegation of noted tax experts to Russia at the invitation of the Russian
State Tax Service and Ministry of Finance; this included Dr. Charles McLure, Jr.
of the Hoover Institution, and Daniel Witt, now ITIC President.
Visiting Russia at a time of rebirth, when the country’s legal and fiscal infrastructure
needed rebuilding from the ground up, those early Western delegations included many
of the founding sponsors of ITIC who continue to support our efforts a decade later.
The vision of a new organization took shape soon thereafter, an organization that
would support the difficult transition from communist to market economies, not only
in Russia but also in many of the newly independent states in the region. The visits
those followed led to the signing of cooperative agreements with the Russian Ministry
of Finance, State Tax Service, and the Kazakhstan Ministry of Finance that established
the International Tax and Investment Center in 1993.
In the past few years these agreements have been seen to be beneficial by the host
governments as ITIC delivered on its promises, helping ministers and members of
parliaments to establish tax policies that stimulate investment, and helping regional
tax administrations with technical expertise on auditing and enforcement.
The results have been startlingly positive, especially during the past five years,
justifying the risks taken by sponsoring Western companies whose expertise and effort
have given ITIC a tremendously successful first decade, and created a momentum and
institutional presence that bode well for even greater accomplishments over the
next ten years. The program has now expanded to cover Ukraine and Azerbaijan, and
contacts are increasingly taking place in several other CIS nations.
The CIS program is the longest and most developed – some examples of tasks are:
- The annual CIS Fiscal Conference, which brings together the most senior officials
from the region together with in-house tax professionals of major companies and
international experts at ITIC’s acclaimed “neutral table” to discuss tax policy
and practice in the countries concerned.
- ITIC’s effort to improve tax administration on the “front lines” by establishing
The Kazakhstan Mineral Taxation Academy from the summer of 2000, where more than
70 revenue officials and foreign experts examined the special features of mineral
taxation, followed by the Azerbaijan Mineral Taxation Academy from 2001. ITIC Tax
and Customs Academies use an interactive seminar format, using host country faculty
as well as Western tax experts, and use a jointly developed curriculum to cover
auditing and financial accounting practices as well as tax policies and practices.
- The Policy Forums, held on a monthly basis in Russia and Kazakhstan, provided government
and Parliament officials and company representatives an opportunity to work together
to identify and solve specific tax and regulatory are being faced by investors.
- The Tax Policy Bulletins provide edited transcripts, in English and Russian, of
each Policy Forum.
- Working Groups and Committees provide useful vehicles to private and public sector
officials in transition countries for focusing attention on critical tax and investment
issues, such as value added, income, and excise taxes, petroleum taxes,financial
service taxes, and expatriate taxes.
- Training workshops and seminars for policy makers and parliamentarians have exposed
hundreds of Russian and Asian parliamentarians and finance and tax officials to
Western taxation and business practices.
The results of our study programs, notes of various meetings and important tax policy
related documents are available in our program libraries, available to sponsors
only.
For more information on becoming an ITIC sponsor, please call our Washington office
at (202)530-9799.
Douglas Townsend, Senior Advisor, manages the technical aspects of the CIS program.