On Saturday, August 17, TEI held its second International Tax Student Case Competition at the Montréal offices of Gowling WLG, the competition’s host sponsor.
Six teams of four students from universities in North and South America competed to determine which team could devise the best solution to a set of international transfer pricing issues. A special thanks to Josephine Scalia, TEI international president and chair of the Case Competition, and Laura Gheorghiu, second vice president of the International Fiscal Association’s Canadian branch and tax partner at GowlingWLG in Montréal, for organizing this year’s competition.
To help prepare students for the competition, the student teams were provided two mentors from TEI’s membership and access to the International Bureau of Fiscal Documentation’s full research software and six module courses on transfer pricing and intellectual property. In addition, the students and their mentors were given full access to the Ask Blue J AI tax software.
The three days of learning and collaboration in Montréal were kicked off on the evening of Thursday, August 15, with a foosball and table tennis tournament hosted by Andersen Canada. On Friday morning, attendees participated in a seminar and hands-on workshop—Using AI in Your International Tax Practice—at the University of Montréal (HEC Montréal) downtown campus hosted by IFA Canada (in collaboration with TEI). Competition attendees joined for a welcome cocktail reception at the Gowling offices on Friday evening.
After three hours of preparation on Saturday, the six student teams presented to a judge’s panel consisting of Sophie Chatel, member of Parliament for Pontiac, Quebec; Robert Stack, managing director at Deloitte Tax; Angelo Nikolakakis, partner at EY Law; Michael O’Connor, consultant at KPMG; and Melinda Phelan, principal at Baker McKenzie. This year’s winners were announced following a gala dinner and awards ceremony at the Club St. James. Two teams tied for first place—HEC Montréal and the University of the District of Columbia, each winning a prize of $2,000 CAD, furnished by IFA Canada and TEI. HEC Montréal was represented by Félix Bergeron, Youness Ellithi, Thomas-Erfan Bélanger-Goadri, and Anthony Tahan. The University of the District of Columbia was represented by Angela Banks, Devon Goodwin, Kelly Maurer, and Kini Reid.
Other schools participating in this year’s competition were the Instituto Brasileiro de Direito Tributário (Brazil), the University of Florida, the Universidad Torcuato Di Tella (Argentina), and the University of Waterloo.
The Case Competition highlights TEI’s commitment to supporting and building a robust and diverse tax student community. TEI has supported tax students for many years and offers almost $200,000 in yearly scholarships through its chapter network. The Institute added student membership in 2019 and launched its Student Committee in 2023. The Student Committee offers tax students the opportunity to join and participate in TEI.
This past year, the Student Committee produced an enlightening student webinar podcast series on Spotify and developed its own Instagram page. We look forward to adding more schools to next year’s Case Competition and growing this important community, which represents future in-house tax executives.
We would like to thank our dedicated TEI mentors for their support of this year’s student teams: Marcus Shore, tax strategic advisor at Dominion Energy; Erin Reilly, international tax manager at the Coca-Cola Company; Igor Soroka, director, corporate taxation, at Saputo; Caroline Escande, tax manager at Nestlé Health Science; Rogerio Leite Araújo, regional senior tax executive at Tetra Pak; Mariana Medeiros Fernandes, tax senior advisor at Dell Technologies; Walter Kolligs, vice president of international tax at Visa; Julia Lagun, head of tax at Comerica Bank; Ana Mata, director of transfer pricing at AtkinsRéalis; Rashpal Brar, head of tax at Restaurant Brands International; Raymond Hui, tax director at Ovivo Inc.; and Lionel Nobre, vice president of Latin American tax at Dell Technologies.
We would also like to thank the following firms that offered financial support, enabling TEI to host the Case Competition: Gowling WLG (host sponsor), Bloomberg Tax & Accounting (travel sponsor), Baker McKenzie (cocktail reception sponsor), McCarthy Tétrault (lunch sponsor), the IBFD (breakfast sponsor), Andersen Canada (foosball and table tennis tournament and general sponsor), KPMG (general sponsor), Barsalou Lawson Rheault LLP (general sponsor), DST Advisory Group (general sponsor), and IFA Canada (prize money sponsor).
TEI is grateful for the contributions to this year’s AI seminar and workshop from Kyle Bunnell; Andrew D. Appleby, associate professor of law at Stetson University; Lucila Paglieri, tax specialist lawyer at dLocal; Jean-Pierre Vidal, professor at HEC Montréal; Louis-Alexandre Cabanel, JD candidate at Stetson University; Ara Stepanyan, principal at The Brattle Group; Shashi Kara, principal and chief technologist at Sente Advisors; Nicolas Vermeys, associate professor at the University of Montréal Law School; and Abdi Aidid, professor at the University of Toronto and Yale.
Finally, TEI thanks Pierre Alary and André Bergeron, partners at Gowling, for their assistance with writing this year’s case, as well as the following individuals who gave their time and insights to make the Case Competition a success: Anne-Marie Nguyen, chair; Ethan Black, vice chair; Yasmine Hannoush, vice chair; and Chloe Canuel and Daniel Bauer, all of the TEI Student Committee; Clara Soussy from Gowling; and Amy Mazur, Jentry Whitehurst, Ben Shreck, and Pilar Mata of the TEI staff.
Discover More
See the reel showing an overview of the three days of events related to the case competition: bit.ly/4gs4ACE.
And check out the Tax Talks with TEI podcast on Spotify at open.spotify.com/show/6TznEi1WGdE8O9MvdlASVx.
