Stephen Daly

Dr Stephen Daly is a Reader in Tax Law at King’s College London and a visiting lecturer at Imperial Business School. He teaches tax law to undergraduate students (International and Corporate Taxation) and postgraduate students (Tax Administration, Procedure and Dispute Resolution and EU Tax Law). After completing his doctoral studies and several years of teaching at the University of Oxford, he moved to King’s College London where he was first a postdoctoral researcher (2016), before becoming a (tenured) Lecturer (2018), Senior Lecturer (2021) and Reader (2024) in due course. He was previously a Lecturer in Law at the University of Birmingham. He has held visiting positions at the Max Planck Institute for Tax Law and Public Finance (as a Hugh Ault Fellow) and at the University of New South Wales. He holds degrees in law from University College Cork (BCL), University College London (LLM) and the University of Oxford (DPhil). He is also a CTA (Fellow), for which he received the Fellowship Medal (the first awarded since 2015).

Dr Daly’s research focuses on administrative law, technical tax law and EU law. He published his first monograph with Hart Publishing (HMRC Advice and the Public (2020)) and has published in leading generalist academic journals (Cambridge Law Journal, Law Quarterly Review, Modern Law Review), in various edited collections and specialist tax journals (British Tax Review, Bulletin for International Taxation, European Taxation, Fiscal Studies, Intertax, Tax Notes). His commentary on issues of tax law and policy has featured in The Observer, The Times, specialist law and tax media (Bloomberg Tax, Tax Journal, Tax Notes Today International, Politico, Law360) as well as on the BBC World Service.

He is a member of the Tax Law Review Committee of the Institute for Fiscal Studies, on the editorial boards of the British Tax Review (book review and reports editor) and the Journal of Tax Administration (managing editor (law)), and a member of HMRC’s Guidance Strategy Forum.

At King’s College London he has served as Senior Tutor, Director of Mooting and Widening Participation Lead. He is currently Associate Dean for Research.

My research on administrative law, technical tax law and EU law can be broken into three relatively discrete areas:

1. The study of public law through the lens of tax administration. My monograph investigates the public law issues that arise by virtue of the assistance provided by tax authorities in the form of advice (Tax Authority Advice and the Public (Hart 2020). My paper ‘OMC, intelligent accountability and monitoring national tax authorities’ in the Modern Law Review (2022), argues that there ought to be a supranational means of holding tax authorities to account over their failure to properly apply tax rules in the EU and that ‘intelligent accountability’ should be adopted, which can be embedded in open method of coordination initiatives. My article ‘Artificial Intelligence, the Rule of Law and Public Administration: the Case of Taxation’ (2024) in the Cambridge Law Journal examines the Rule of Law implications of the use of artificial intelligence in tax administration.
2. The relationship between tax and State aid. Several of my articles consider how tax administration can engage the EU State aid rules and to that end make propositions about the appropriate interaction between them. ‘The power to get it wrong’ in the Law Quarterly Review (2021), argues that the State aid rules should accommodate misapplications by domestic tax authorities, whilst ‘The constitutional implications of an EU arm’s length principle’ in European Taxation (2020) argues against the idea that EU law autonomously requires arm’s length treatment between associated enterprises. I have also published lengthy case notes in Tax Notes International (with Prof Ruth Mason), the Modern Law Review (peer-reviewed) and British Tax Review on the very significant CJEU judgments in respect of the tax rulings provided to Apple, Fiat and Engie respectively.
3. The role of taxation in society. My work has considered whether the tax system can positively respond to societal problems: through expanding the tax base (Mumford, Spangenberg and I published a lengthy research article in the Columbia Journal of European Law in 2019 which considers means of using EU law to develop sustainable taxation; Loutzenhiser, Hughson and I published an article in Fiscal Studies in 2021 on issues around valuation in wealth taxes); implementing fiscal, health and social policy (2023 Accounting and Business Research article). In 2022, Lawton and I published original research on the health of tax teaching in UK higher education (British Tax Review, 2022).

1. The study of public law through the lens of tax administration:

• ‘Artificial Intelligence, the Rule of Law and Public Administration: the Case of Taxation’ (forthcoming) Cambridge Law Journal
• 'The OMC, intelligent accountability and the monitoring of national tax authorities' (2022) 85(5) Modern Law Review 1109
• Tax Authority Advice and The Public (Hart 2020)
• ‘Drawing the boundaries of HMRC’s discretion’ in Rita de la Feria and Glen Loutzenhiser (eds), Essays in Honour of Judith Freedman (Hart 2020)
• ‘Public law in the tax tribunals and the case for reform’ [2018] British Tax Review 94
• ‘Recent developments in tax law: vires revisited’ [2016] 2 Public Law 190

2. The relationship between tax administration and State aid:

• ‘Plus ça change: The fate of the Commission’s open investigations’ (2024) 64(6) European Taxation 241
• ‘Debate: The Advocate General’s opinion in Commission v Ireland and Apple’ (2024) 52(6/7) Intertax 493
• ‘Commission v Luxembourg and Engie – (another?) mortal wound in the Commission’s campaign’ [2024] 1 British Tax Review 91
• ‘Fiat v Commission: a misconceived approach’ (2023) 86(6) Modern Law Review 1489 
• 'The power to get it wrong’ (2021) 137(2) Law Quarterly Review 280
• ‘The constitutional implications of an EU arm’s length principle’ (2020) 60(2/3) European Taxation 70
• w/ R. Mason ‘State Aid: The General Court Decision in Apple’ (2020) 99(10) Tax Notes International 1317/ (2020) 168(10) Tax Notes Federal 1791

3. The role of taxation in society:

• ‘Tax systems - adaptability and resilience during a global pandemic’ (2023) 53(5) Accounting and Business Research 561
• w/A. Lawton, ‘Another check of the temperature of tax teaching in the UK’ [2022] 2 British Tax Review 202
• w/ H. Hughson and G. Loutzenhiser, ‘Valuation for the purposes of a wealth tax’ (2021) 42(3/4) Fiscal Studies 615
• w/ U. Spangenberg and A. Mumford, ‘Moving beyond the narrow lens of taxation: The Sustainable Development Goals as an Opportunity for Fair and Sustainable Taxation’ (2019) 26(1) Columbia Journal of European Law 36