Professor Shaun Parsons

Professor in the College of Accounting at UCT

Professor Shaun Parsons is a professor in the College of Accounting at UCT, where he is the head of the Tax section and teaches postgraduate Taxation. He is also the co-ordinator of the College’s Scholarship portfolio. Professor Parsons holds a PhD in Taxation and an MCom (Taxation), as well as postgraduate diplomas in Accounting and Tax Law from UCT. He is also an Adjunct Professor (Clinical) at the Curtin Law School, Australia. He is a Chartered Accountant (South Africa) and a registered tax practitioner. Before joining academia in 2010, he worked at a Big 4 accounting firm in Cape Town and London.

Professor Parsons’s research focuses on the intersection of emerging technology with domestic and international tax systems. It seeks to assess the degree to which these technologies can be accommodated by existing tax systems designed primarily for a traditional “brick-and-mortar” economy. The impact of these technologies features prominently in some of the most significant international tax developments in recent years, including the OECD’s BEPS Project, the introduction of digital service taxes (DSTs), the Pillar One and Pillar Two (now GloBE) proposals, and the Crypto Asset Reporting Framework (CARF).

https://uct.ac.za/