Richard Teather is the leading British academic and consultant specializing in offshore tax.
His writings have been published in five continents, translated into numerous foreign languages, and cited globally, including being quoted in debates in several national parliaments. His book “The Benefits of Tax Competition” is held in government and university collections around the world.
He acts as a consultant to governmental and industry bodies, gives lectures and conference presentations internationally, and is an experienced media performer.
His tax policy advice has been followed successfully in several jurisdictions. He advised the Jersey parliament on their biggest tax reforms in sixty years, including the abolition of corporation tax and the introduction of GST. The Teather Report for Cayman Finance convinced the government that an income tax was not the right solution for the Cayman Islands. He was described as providing the “intellectual clout” to the successful campaign to prevent an inappropriate VAT from being introduced to the Turks & Caicos Islands.
He was one of the experts sent by the European Commission to help eastern European countries in their transition to European Union membership and worked with the fledgling Tunisian democracy on tax reform.
He was Senior Lecturer in Tax Law at Bournemouth University for over twenty years, was an external examiner to the University of Gibraltar, and is a Fellow of the Adam Smith Institute and a member of the editorial board of the journal Economic Affairs. He is also a chartered accountant and has practiced as a tax adviser, first with Deloitte and then with top ten ‘City’ law firm Denton Wilde Sapte.
His work on UK tax reform hit the headlines when the UK government tried to suppress its civil servants’ favorable comments on it, and the editor of The Business wrote “rarely has a think-tank publication been this influential so quickly.” Industry insiders voted him one of the world’s most influential people in global finance, in the Finance Centres International 500 survey.