Dr Marius van Oordt, a Senior Lecturer with the African Tax Institute (ATI) at the University of Pretoria (UP), has been announced as the 2016 winner in the doctoral category of the national Tax Thesis Competition.

This annual competition is a joint initiative of the global law firm Norton Rose Fulbright, the South African Institute of Professional Accountants (SAIPA) and Sanlam, which aims to recognise innovative thinking by up-and-coming talent in the tax field. The awards breakfast was held on 20 October 2016, where Dr Van Oordt was awarded his prize in recognition of his doctoral thesis titled 'A quantitative measurement of policy options to inform value-added tax reform in South Africa', which was supervised by Prof Riël Franzsen, the Director of the ATI, and Prof Niek Schoeman, Professor Emeritus in Economics.

'I think it is great that the sponsors of the competition give recognition to young tax researchers and the work that went into my thesis,' said Dr Van Oordt, who is also the first South African Research Chairs Initiative (SARChI) Tax Policy and Governance doctoral student to graduate from UP's Faculty of Economic and Management Sciences.

He has been working at UP since 2010, in which time he has supervised a number of master's degree dissertations and taught extensively on a postgraduate level. His work is focused on value-added tax policy in developing and transitional countries. He is also a member of the United Nations sub-committee on extractive industries taxation in developing countries.

Dr Van Oordt is very appreciative of winning. 'I hope the award can draw additional attention to the research conducted in my thesis, so that it can further contribute to the South African value-added tax policy debate.'

Dr van Oordt joins a growing list of graduates from UP who have taken top honours in this category of the competition over the years. They are:

2010 – Prof Madeleine Stiglingh

2011 – Dr Elzette Muller

2012 – Prof Theuns Steyn

2013 – Dr Sharon Smulders

2014 – Dr Benjamin Kujinga