prof. dr. I.J.J. (Irene) Burgers

Irene.J.J. Burgers (1962, Deventer, the Netherlands) is Professor of International Tax Law at the Faculty of Law of the University of Groningen and Professor of Economics of Taxation at the Faculty of Economics and Business of the University of Groningen.

She graduated in 1985 in Economics of Taxation as well as in Business Economics at the University of Groningen and took her doctorate in Law at this University in Tax Law with a dissertation entitled “The allocation of fiscal profits to branches of internationally operating banking enterprises”. For this dissertation she was awarded the Mitchell. B Carroll Prize 1992, an award granted by the International Fiscal Association for the best work devoted to international tax law published in that year.

Irene Burgers interests focus on tax aspects of doing international business.

She teaches courses on International Tax Law, European Tax law, Tax Policy, Taxation of Business Profits and Tax Risk Management.

Besides International and European tax law she has interest in Energy Tax Law and in Tax Accounting and Control.  She wrote more than 250 publications and is a frequent speaker in these fields. She is the external editor and one of the authors of the IBFD electronic database "Permanent Establishments", the editor and one of the authors of the WoltersKluwer-publication "Belastingrecht in Hoofdlijnen" (a Handbook on the fundamentals of Dutch Tax Law) and the editor and one of the authors of the SDU-publication "Wegwijs in het Internationaal en Europees Belastingrecht" (a Handbook on Dutch International and European Tax Law).

She acts as peer reviewer for scientific publications and research projects, including the internal peer reviewer of the Sustainable tax governance in developing countries through global tax transparency (DeStat) project of the University of Oslo, WU Wien, the Universidade de Sao Paulo, the Instituto Colombiano de Derecho Tributario and the University of Cape Town (2014 - 2017). 

She is one of the members of the Co-operative Compliance Research Group set up by WU Wien bringing together groups of researchers from all over the world, and including governments, MNEs and representatives from international organisations which project is carried out in cooperation with CATA (Commonwealth Association of Tax Administrators and ICC (International Chamber of Commerce) and having as aim to produce a “A Handbook on implementing Co-​operative Compliance which governments and business could use to implement co-​operative compliance programs. 

She practiced tax law as tax adviser with PricewaterhouseCoopers. Furthermore she was one of the independent persons for the EU Arbitration Committee (1995 – 2013). She has been member of several Advisory Groups providing advise to the Dutch Ministry of Finance, amongst others the Klankbordgroep Horizontaal Toezicht (Advisory Group Cooperative Compliance), the Klankbordgroep Bouwstenen voor een beter belastingstelsel (Advisory Group Building Blocks for a better tax system) and the Onderzoekscommissie Rulings met een internationaal karakter (Research Committee Rulings having an international dimension).

She is Member of the Editorial Board of Maandblad Belastingbeschouwingen and Member of the International Fiscal Association (IFA), the European Association of Tax Law Professors (EATLP) and the European Accounting Association (EAA).