Michael Lennard is Chief of International Tax Cooperation and Trade in the Financing for Development Office (FfDO) of the United Nations. This work has a particular focus on ensuring the fairness and workability of international tax norms, including achieving greater developing country input into those norms, and encouraging cooperation to improve tax systems and administrations, as a spur to sustained development.
Previously Mr Lennard was a tax treaty adviser in the OECD Tax Treaty Secretariat in Paris for three years and prior to that he worked on tax treaty and other international tax matters at the Australian Tax Office. He had earlier worked in the Australian government’s Office of International Law.
He has led Australian negotiating teams on trade, investment, environmental and tax treaty matters and has prepared argument for matters before the Australian High Court, the US Supreme Court and the WTO. His published work on treaty interpretation has been cited before WTO panels and before the WTO Appellate Body. Mr Lennard has degrees from the University of Tasmania, the Australian National University and Cambridge.
