International Taxation Study Tour

Two and a half weeks across the UK, France, Belgium and the Netherlands as a Student Ambassador, a moving classroom on how tax actually works when it crosses borders. Below is the reel of visits, tightened from a reflective journal I kept along the way.

17 June · London. Walking tour

Started with Buckingham Palace and a walking tour of the old city. Not a tax stop, but useful context: the institutions we'd meet all sit on top of this history.

18 June · BDO London

First professional visit. Came in assuming BDO was mostly audit and accounting; left understanding how much of the firm sits in advisory, consulting and business services. Talked with senior staff about how they got their seats and what a graduate path into a global professional services firm actually looks like: the openings, the certifications, and the "keep learning" reflex the industry needs.

19 June · Cambridge

Sessions with PhD candidates were the biggest surprise of the trip. One talk on the taxation of digital currency, another on space taxation, literally who has the right to tax activity in orbit. I came expecting a generic knowledge-share and left with a much sharper sense of how far the research frontier is ahead of everyday practice, and how much room there is to work on the edges.

20 June · ATT, Association of Taxation Technicians

A close look at what it means to be a chartered tax technician: the qualification path, the day-to-day responsibilities, and how ATT is preparing members for automation and digital reporting. Reinforced how much of a tax career is built on credentials plus continuous learning rather than a single degree.

21 June · Fair Tax Foundation

Virtual meeting on responsible corporate tax behaviour. Walked in expecting a policy briefing and got a much more practical conversation: how the Fair Tax mark works in practice, what "paying your fair share" means to a listed company, and how tax reputation feeds back into investor relations and brand. This one shifted how I think about tax as a CSR lever, not just a compliance function.

24 June · Herbert Smith Freehills, Paris

Inside a global law firm's Paris office. The conversation zoomed in on the career map for lawyers at multinational firms: what a graduate needs to have on paper, what they need to have on their feet, and how tax-and-legal work knits together on cross-border transactions.

25 June · OECD

The big one. A session on how the OECD shapes global tax policy: BEPS, Pillar One and Pillar Two, transfer pricing, and how that filters down to national law. What stuck with me was the pragmatic side: how much of the OECD's work is coordination, translation, and getting very different tax administrations to move in roughly the same direction.

26 June · European Commission, Brussels

Berlaymont building, Brussels. A structural view of how the EU executive actually runs, and where tax policy fits inside a much wider political machine. Made concrete how tax rules get made in a multi-state context, and how many hands a directive passes through before it becomes law.

27 June · France Tax Authority (DGFiP)

A working walk-through of the French tax system, with a focus on how authorities handle late payers and large-file cases. The multi-track approach: reminders, penalties, negotiated payment plans, and, when needed, litigation and inter-agency cooperation, was a useful contrast to the Australian model.

1 July · IBFD Library, Amsterdam

Closed with a research-institute visit at the International Bureau of Fiscal Documentation. Walking the stacks of one of the world's leading tax libraries put the whole trip into perspective: BEPS, digital tax, global excess profits. The field is moving fast, and access to real research infrastructure matters.

What I took home

• A working mental map of global tax policy: OECD → EU → national tax authorities → firm-level compliance.
• A stronger conviction that tax work is strategic, not just technical. That means fair-tax positioning, cross-border structuring, and career paths in international advisory all point the same way.
• A short list of the professional credentials, languages, and networks I'd need to work in this space long-term.