On 28 March 2018, Fudan Law School welcomed Associate Professor Stephen Phua from the National University of Singapore Faculty of Law to deliver a lecture on “How Tax Policy Promotes Economic Development: The Singapore Success Story for China”.

Professor Phua was received by Vice Dean Chen Li, who introduced Fudan Law School’s brand-new initiatives for further raising her international profile. Both parties expressed strong interest in assisting the two law schools to cement existing strong ties.

In this talk, Professor Phua gave a comprehensive overview of Singapore’s fiscal and tax policies, tracing their evolution since her independence and illustrating the economic impact of these policy changes with an impressive array of statistics. While Professor Phua has referred to Singapore’s economic growth as a “text-book example” of successful fiscal and tax policies, he is acutely cognizant of the limited comparability between Singapore and China, and humbly stops short of suggesting that Singapore may have any lesson to offer China. Instead, Professor Phua closes his lecture with his veteran observations and conclusions drawn from Singapore’s experience, leaving them as food for thought for his young bright Chinese audience, who will soon take center-stage in shaping the nation’s future.

About the Speaker

Associate Professor Stephen Phua teaches Income Tax, Goods and Services Tax, Corporate Taxation, International Tax and Business & Finance for Lawyers in the Faculty of Law, National University of Singapore. He is a consultant with the Inland Revenue Authority of Singapore (IRAS) and an examiner with the Chartered Institute of Taxation in London. He is also an Eastern Scholar, Shanghai, PRC and a Visiting Professor at the International Law School of East China University of Law and Politics. He is a member of INTR, OECD and is a program advisor to the International Tax and Investment Center in Washington DC.

He was a visiting scholar/professor to several leading universities in Australia, Canada, China, Japan and the USA. He was a member of the Tax Advisory Group in Ministry of Finance. He served as a member for more than a decade on each one of the three tax tribunals in Singapore (Income Tax Board of Review, Goods and Services Tax Board of Review and Valuation Review Board). Prior to joining IRAS, he was a tax consultant in a leading law firm in Singapore.