“It's a watershed moment for international tax policy”ICAEW is delighted to invite you to the first seminar in our series on A Better International Tax System: EU Perspectives on 22 January, focused on the digital economy.Creating a more appropriate tax framework as a backdrop for business to contribute to the growth and jobs agenda is a key objective for the EU and the international community. At the same time, it is important to ensure that aggressive tax planning and illegal tax evasion do not undermine this objective. Aggressive cross-border tax planning can threaten the public finances and, if unchecked, can undermine citizens’ trust in the fairness and integrity of the tax system. At stake is the capacity of governments to make and implement decisions which affect the public today and tomorrow. In the EU, the loss of revenue due to illegal fraud and tax evasion schemes has been estimated to amount to as much as one trillion euros annually by some commentators.The last G20 Summit in Russia endorsed the OECD’s Action Plan to counter base erosion and profit shifting (BEPS), in recognition that adjusting the current international tax regime to reflect an increasingly global and digital economy is essential. Reform needs also to respond to a growing popular perception that large companies are paying reduced amounts of tax at a time when austerity measures are placing additional burdens on ordinary citizens. A fairer and more predictable global tax framework, which will encourage economic growth while ensuring that all businesses, large and small, make an appropriate contribution to the public finances, is needed.The global tax framework is designed to tax international businesses by reference to the location where they make their profits. In today’s world – and especially for digital businesses – it is increasingly difficult to determine where those profits arise. A coherent and co-ordinated approach to taxing the digital economy at EU and international level will need to both protect the tax bases of individual countries and ensure a fair system internationally.Keynote speaker:Pascal Saint-Amans – Director, Centre for Tax Policy and Administration, OECD Panellists include:Philip Kermode –  Director, DG TAXUD, European CommissionDaniel Bertossa – Senior Policy and Advocacy Officer, Public Services InternationalPaul Morton – Head of Group Tax, Reed Elsevier Group plcArmin Geyer – Head of M&A Tax Group, Global Tax, SAP AG Moderated by Robert Hodgkinson – Executive Director, ICAEW