Professor Rita de la Feria

Profile

I joined the School of Law at the University of Leeds in January 2016 as Chair in Tax Law. I am an International Research Fellow at the Centre for Business Taxation, Oxford University (2012-), and Visiting Professor at the University of Lisbon (2010-).

I received my law degree from the University of Lisbon, and a PhD from the University of Dublin, Trinity College, after a short career in practice, working in the Lisbon and Dublin offices of Arthur Andersen. Prior to joining the University of Leeds, I was the Chair in Tax Law at Durham University (2012-2015), Senior Research Fellow at Oxford University (2007-2012); and had previously held lecturing positions at both Trinity College, Dublin and Queen’s University Belfast. I have also held visiting positions at New York University, Law School, USA (2008), and ATAX, University of New South Wales, Sydney, Australia (2009); and teach, or have previously taught, on the LLM or MSc programmes offered at Católica Global School of Law, Lisbon, Portugal (2010-); Leiden University, Netherlands (2014-2016); and Oxford University, UK (2017-).

My research on tax law and on tax avoidance is regularly cited by courts across Europe, including the EU Court of Justice and various European Supreme Courts, and has supported various policy documents emerging from the EU institutions, the IMF, the IDB, and as well as from various national Governments around the world. I was Tax Policy and Legal Adviser to the Portuguese Government (2011-2012), and to the Government of Timor-Leste (2015-2016).  Under the auspices of the IMF, I have also provided tax policy and legal drafting advice to the Governments of Sao Tome and Principe, Angola, and Turkey. I have testified before the UK Houses of Parliament on international tax avoidance (2013), and online tax fraud (2017); before the European Parliament PANA Committee on tax havens (2017), and on VAT rates (2018); and before the Parliaments of Timor-Leste (2016) and Sao Tome and Principe (2017) on the implementation of VAT.

I was listed for two years running (2015-2016) in the Global Tax 50, by the International Tax Review, as one of the most influential tax people in the World; and was co-recipient of the 2016 Outstanding Women in Tax Award, awarded by the Tax Analysts. 

I also feature regularly in general media outlets discussing developments in taxation policy around the world, I have written for the Guardian (2017), and recently worked with the BBC Panorama and the Guardian as an expert on the “Paradise Papers” leaks (2017), with her contributions widely reported worldwide.

Research interests

My research focus primarily on tax law and policy – particularly on the intersection between tax law and EU law, between tax law and public economics, and more recently between tax law and criminology – and I have published widely on these areas. In particular, I am the author / editor of four books, published by Kluwer Law International (2004-; 2013), Hart Publishing (2011), and IBFD (2009).  I have published over 50 articles / book chapters, in EN, PT, and DE, which have been published inter alia in the Common Market Law Review, the International and Comparative Law Quarterly, and the European Law Review. I am regularly invited to speak on tax issues at conferences and seminars around the world, having presented in over 30 countries and across five continents in the past decade.  I have also provided training to the judiciary, and to tax administrations around the world, the latter amongst others within the framework of the European Commission’s Fiscalis Programme, and under the auspices of the IMF. 

I am a member of the Editorial Board of the British Tax Review (2008-), the EC Tax Review (2016-), and the Journal of Tax Administration (2017-); as well as UK representative at the Academic Committee of the EATLP – European Association of Tax Law Professors (2013-).

Professional memberships

• European Association of Tax Law Professors
• International Fiscal Association

Research groups and institutes

• Centre for Business Law and Practice

Current postgraduate researchers

• Evelyse Carvalho Ribas
• Ananya Banerjee
• Fabricio Campos
• Theophilus Tawiah
• Yunze Xiao