Prof. Archie William Parnell

Archie Parnell began his legal career as a trial attorney in 1974 in Washington, D.C. at the United States Department of Justice in its Tax Division. He later joined the staff of the Ways and Means Committee of the U.S. House of Representatives. He left the U.S. Government to join Exxon Corporation’s Tax Department and, in 1984, was sent to Hong Kong to head its Asia Pacific Tax Department. Exxon thereafter sent him to Brussels to its European Tax Department. Archie returned to Hong Kong in 1990 to join the international law firm of Coudert Brothers and in 1994 joined Goldman Sachs in Hong Kong and Tokyo where he headed its tax function in Asia. He left Goldman Sachs as Global Head of Tax Policy in 2017 and ran for United States Congress in the 5th District of South Carolina as a Democrat (he lost the election but not his confidence that we can, together, make a better world).

Archie has been active in various tax committees and was Chair of the American Chamber’s Tax Committee in 1992, 1993 and 1998 in Hong Kong and Chair of the Capital Markets Tax Committee of Asia in 1994, 1995 and 1997. He participated in the Hong Kong Joint Liaison Tax Committee for several years in the 1990s. He was a member of the Board of Review (first level of tax appeals in Hong Kong) for 10 years. He was a member of the Business and Investment Advisory Committee (“BIAC”) in Paris to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (“OECD”) from 2010 to 2016 and Vice Chair of BIAC’s Tax Committee to the OECD from 2013 to 2016.

On the academic front, Archie taught international tax law as an adjunct professor at the University of South Carolina School of Law. He has regularly spoken at a variety of tax and other conferences and in 2019 spoke at the Hong Kong Branch of the International Fiscal Association on The History of International Taxation in the United States since the 16th Amendment: Where We Are Now and Implications for the Future. He is currently co-teaching an international tax course with Prof. Kinshuk Jha at the O.P. Jindal Global (Institution of Eminence Deemed To Be University) Law School titled, A Tale of Two Tax Systems: Discerning Solutions for India-US Tax Disputes.