Wim Wuyts

Wim Wuyts is an independent board member at Upgrade Estate and former CEO of WTS Global, a leading global tax advisory network, with ties to the Ghent tech and Entrepreneurship community via Wintercircus.

8 News mentions

Overview

Wim Wuyts served as CEO and Managing Director of WTS Global, a global network of tax advisors. He previously held the position of VP and Global Head of Tax at Bekaert, where he was part of the global senior leadership team. In 2016, he founded the International School for Tax Leadership, offering executive programs globally.

Outside his tax career, Wuyts served as an independent board member at Upgrade Estate, the Ghent-based connected housing company co-founded by Nele Van Damme and Koenraad Belsack. He also had ties to Wintercircus and the Brussels-Africa Hub, and was involved in L.Arena, an art installation project in Venice.

Career history

  1. WintercircusPast

Insights & ideas

The through-line

Across professional and personal posts, Wim Wuyts keeps returning to one idea: durable success is built on trust between people, not on scale, structure, or recognition. He applies this lens to law firm mergers [13], cross-organisation professional ties [14], industry award shortlists [15], and family business succession [12]. Even his non-professional posts carry the same preoccupation in a different register, praising Canada for "the quiet strength of a nation that never needed the loudest voice in the room to leave a lasting impression" [1]. Over the period covered, the emphasis shifts slightly from celebrating deal-making and combinations (Svalner Group and Atlas Tax Lawyers, WTS Africa) toward more explicit reflections on what comes next for tax practice itself, as new posts about AI and the future of international tax rules appear [5][8].

On trust and partnership

Wuyts repeatedly frames organisational achievement as the product of relationships rather than mechanics. On the Svalner Atlas | Advisors combination, he writes that "enduring platforms are not created by financial engineering alone. They emerge when trust is strong enough for people to share ambition, take risks together and invest in a common future" [13]. He extends this logic beyond formal structures, noting of WTS Africa that "the strongest professional relationships transcend organisations" [14]. When Tiberghien Lawyers was shortlisted for ITR Tax Awards, he downplayed the honor itself: "The real award is not the recognition. It's the partnership who trust the entire team enough to build something impactful together" [15].

On succession as a process

Discussing work with entrepreneurial families and family offices, Wuyts describes succession explicitly as ongoing rather than a single milestone: "the strongest families understand that succession is not an event, but a process. A journey shaped by stewardship, governance, trust, and meaningful dialogue across generations" [12]. He ties this to Tiberghien's role as more than a legal or tax adviser, positioning the firm as a partner that helps "build bridges between generations" and "preserve both harmony and ambition for the future" [12].

On tax rules and the future of business

Wuyts flags the disappearance of human labor from business models as a live concern for international tax policy, amplifying Dina Scornos's research question: "what happens to international tax rules when humans gradually disappear from the business model?" [8]. He frames the challenge as one of adapting the system itself, asking "how do we ensure that international tax systems remain fair, effective, and future-proof?" as AI and robotics reshape business models [5].

Takeaways

  • He treats mergers and combinations (e.g., Svalner Group and Atlas Tax Lawyers) as trust exercises first, not financial engineering exercises [13].
  • He views professional relationships as outlasting the firms that host them, citing ongoing ties with WTS Africa [14].
  • He advises treating family business succession as a continuous process of governance and dialogue, not a one-time event [12].
  • He is tracking, through Dina Scornos's PhD research, the question of how international tax rules should adapt as human labor disappears from business models [8].
  • He publicly reframes industry award recognition as secondary to internal team trust [15].

Media & appearances

In the news

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