As professor by special appointment, Mariken van Hilten will focus on the growing interest in European-style value-added tax. The importance of this form of taxation has increased over the last decade as a result of several developments in Europe and across the world. These include the rise in the number of EU member states, but also in the number of countries outside the EU that have introduced VAT. Moreover, within the framework of increasing global trade, indirect taxes like VAT and customs duties are becoming more important as an own ‘source’ of revenue for the EU, a development with budgetary and other consequences. A third development is the shift from tax on income to taxes that interlink with the consumption of goods and services. Finally, the digitisation of society and the movement of goods and services also play an important role.

Prof. Van Hilten has extensive expertise in the field of indirect taxes, particularly VAT and customs duties, from the perspective of European and national law. In her research, she has devoted considerable attention to the interaction between international and supranational law on the one hand, and national law on the other.

Prof. Van Hilten has broad experience in the field of (tax) law, in academia and in tax consultancy as well as in the judiciary. Since 1 September 2015, she has been Justice of the Supreme Court of the Netherlands, where she was also advocate-general from 2007 to 2015. Prior to this, Prof. Van Hilten was a judge at the Court of Appeals in Amsterdam and ’s-Hertogenbosch. In 1992, she obtained her PhD from Leiden University with the dissertation Bancaire en financiële prestaties in de Europese BTW. Prof. Van Hilten was affiliated to Leiden University for more than ten years as a lecturer and as professor of Indirect Taxes, and has also held the special chair in Indirect Taxes at the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam (VU). In addition to her academic duties, she has worked extensively as a tax consultant at various organisations, including KPMG Meijburg & Co.