TEI Asia Chapter cohosts U.S. Tax Conference with Tax Academy of Singapore.

• Position: Chapter News

2010 was an eventful year for TEI Asia Chapter. In order to ensure that the Institute continues to grow in Asia and the Pacific Rim, the leaders of the chapter concluded that TEI needed to look beyond the traditional approaches for membership recruitment and to acknowledge that globalization had created different potential untapped participant groups. With large economies in several countries recovering from the global recession but continuing spending restraints. TEI Asia Chapter focused on raising the performance bar for itself in providing valuable education and networking opportunities at affordable prices, not only to existing members and to non-members in emerging markets (like India and China) and to corporate groups with a different profile.

Early in its existence, TEI Asia Chapter confirmed a strong interest for accessible and affordable U.S. tax education, especially in key hubs like Singapore where there are a significant number of U.S. multinational corporations present. Although the chapter has long been successful in reacting "conventional" participants (i.e., professionals working for U.S.-based groups), in 2010 the chapter worked to expand its reach to a potentially different participant profile. Increasingly, outbound investments from the United States is not the only focus; rather, a market exists for tax executives from medium size companies and large MNCs operating from Asia having an interest to make inbound investments into the United States. To serve this expanded group of professionals, the chapter undertook to establish strategic alliances to promote TEI's brand of U.S. tax education.

In 2006, the Tax Academy of Singapore (TAS) was established the Inland Revenue Authority of Singapore in collaboration with the Big Four accounting firms (Deloitte & Touche, Ernst & Young, KPMG, and PricewaterhouseCoopers), the Institute of Certified Public Accountants of Singapore, and the Law Society of Singapore. TAS is a non-profit organization and its mission is to raise the professional competency of the tax community in Singapore and to develop Singapore into a regional tax knowledge hub; its goal is to become the premier center for tax education, delivering high standards of tax education for tax professionals. TAS is the only institution in Singapore that offers a comprehensive structure for tax education, one that builds tax competency from foundational to the advanced level. TAS also organizes seminars and conferences...