Rate My Professor Richard Vann

Richard J. Vann is Professor Emeritus and Challis Professor of Law in the Sydney Law School at the University of Sydney. He earned his BA (Hons) and LLB (Hons) from the University of Queensland and his BCL from Oxford University. Vann has held distinguished visiting teaching appointments at several world-leading institutions, including William K. Jacobs Jr. Visiting Professor at Harvard Law School in 2006, as well as at New York University School of Law, the University of London School of Advanced Study, the University of Amsterdam, and the University of Oxford. His professional experience extends to key roles at international organizations: Counsel (Taxation) in the Legal Department of the International Monetary Fund in Washington, DC from 1990 to 1991, and Head of the Central and Eastern Europe and New Independent States Program in the Fiscal Affairs Division of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development in Paris from 1992 to 1995.

Vann has provided expert consultancy to the Australian government on multiple occasions, including the Review of Business Taxation from 1998 to 1999, the Review of International Taxation from 2002 to 2003, and ongoing membership on the Australian Taxation Office Public Rulings Panels for international and indirect taxation since 1995. He has been a consultant with the specialist tax firm Greenwoods & Herbert Smith Freehills since 1985 and previously directed the Ross Parsons Centre of Commercial, Corporate and Taxation Law at the University of Sydney. A Chartered Tax Adviser (CTA), his research focuses on corporate, comparative, and international taxation, with extensive publications including "The OECD Model Tax Convention: Was There a Grand Plan?" in Studies in the History of Tax Law Volume 11 (2023), "Tax Treaties: The Secret Agent's Secrets" (2006), "Writing Tax Treaty History" (2011), "Transfer Pricing Disputes in Australia" in Resolving Transfer Pricing Disputes (2014), and contributions to Tax Law Design and Drafting Volume 2 on international aspects of income tax. He served on the Permanent Scientific Committee of the International Fiscal Association from 2005 to 2013 and as International Research Fellow at the Centre for Business Taxation, Saïd Business School, University of Oxford. Currently, he teaches Tax Treaties in the Melbourne Law Masters program at Melbourne Law School.