On April 29, more than 100 tax professionals gathered at the Multnomah Athletic Club in Portland, Oregon, for the TEI Portland Chapter’s Annual Tax Conference.
Chapter President Michael Burch of Nike started the conference by welcoming participants. Eric Solomon, co-director of Ernst & Young’s national tax department, delivered the keynote on tax policy. Manal Corwin, KPMG’s National Service Line Leader for international tax, summarized the Organisation for Economoic Co-operation and Development’s (OECD) ambitious Base Erosion and Profit Shifting (BEPS) project. Manal worked for the U.S. Treasury Department and was the U.S. delegate to the OECD’s Committee on Fiscal Affairs when the BEPS project was initiated.
Participants chose between one of two discussions to attend. The first, given by Jeff Jones and Nicole Stork of PwC, was about developments on the research-and-development tax credits. The second, on valuation, was led by Jeffrey Tarbell of Houlihan Lokey.
The final presentation of the conference, a panel discussion on ASC 740, was moderated by Monique Bertram of Kieckhafer Schiffer & Co. The panelists were Eric Sleeth of PwC, Jay Broudy of KPMG, Allen Plass of EY, and Paul Vitola of Deloitte.
Attendees regrouped after the conference for a networking cocktail reception, which provided the opportunity for further discussion of hot tax issues in a less formal environment.
Other topics discussed at the conference included presentations on corporate transactions development by Andy Cordonnier of Grant Thornton, the evolution of nexus in state taxation by Scott Schiefelbein of Deloitte, and tax accounting methods delivered by Jennifer Kennedy of PwC.
