Dear Estimated Readers,

I hope you are enjoying and making the most of your well-deserved Winter holidays!

I only disturb your “tax-free” peace to make a short announcement before the closure of 2023 and the beginning of New Year 2024.

After four years of mutually fruitful collaboration, I have decided to step down in my role as an editor of this renowned Kluwer International Tax Blog.

This decision does not relate to any particular issues with other editors or the board of this journal but only to some reflections I have been elaborating on in the last few months.

Mainly, two reflections.

• We live in a world of presenteeism where holding and maintaining a position (sometimes, with a tight grip) is perceived as very important while accepting to release it is anything but common. Unfortunately, this attitude is also widespread in (tax) academia.
• I think it is important to give other VAT/GST colleagues of mine the opportunity to experiment in the field and bring fresh ideas to this blog. We all – myself included – are not certainly the best and we/I should accept that another colleague can do the same job better.

I will, of course, continue my activity as an editor of Highlights & Insights on European Taxation and Intertax and also continue to publish (also) on this blog as a guest/invited contributor.

Of course, I did not recommend any specific name for a possible replacement as a new editor, but I noticed we have many exceptional female tax colleagues, particularly in VAT/GST .

Best of luck to the new editor and the other editors, Alice Pirlot, Dennis Weber, and Vikram Chand, as well as the valuable Wolters Kluwer team members Lisa Zoltowska and Anika Dačić.

Thank you for all these years, and all the best for a brilliant 2024!

Giorgio