Businesses need a holistic strategy to tackle an ever more complex tax system
Businesses need a holistic strategy to tackle an ever more complex tax system, says new corporate tax partner leading audit, tax and business advisory firm, Blick Rothenberg.
Kamal Aggarwall, who has joined Blick Rothenberg from KPMG said: “As the volume of expected tax governance documentation continues to increase, compliance strategies must be holistic across a business and not just ‘the tax team’s problem’.”
He added: “The long-standing senior accounting officer demands are now supplemented by ever more detailed Business Risk Review questions, the Corporate Criminal Offences Regime, the requirement to publish a tax strategy and to report Uncertain Tax Treatments. Further, we have seen the introduction of Guidelines for Compliance which bring additional expectations. That said, these requirements also present an opportunity for businesses.”
Kamal said: “A well-functioning business wide strategy, that quickly identifies and triages risks and develops proportionate mitigations can quickly find and close off costly tax authority challenges before they begin. This also allows tax teams to streamline to avoid duplication, to partner with finance and the wider business to deliver more value for their groups.”
He added: “However, the preparation of documentation is only one side of the equation, the more often overlooked side is the need to embed the behaviours, ensure systems keep up and run tests to ensure processes are working as they should. All this needs to be maintained and delivered over and above compliance, reporting and advising the business on a day-to-day basis.”
Kamal said: “When you include additional factors such as the use of AI, aligning internationally and the potential desire to scale quickly, the competing demands rise very quickly for businesses. Some years ago, tax authorities were satisfied by the presence of documentation. Emphasis has more recently shifted to testing whether what is written down is what actually happens in practice. This space will continue to demand more and evolve as tax authorities increasingly learn from each other and adopt AI themselves to ask more targeted questions.”
He added: “Before joining Blick Rothenberg, I worked at KPMG and spent time in-house at two large tech groups so have lived the experience of my clients. This shapes how I like to approach my client work – working collaboratively and producing output that is actually useful.”
Kamal said: “I was attracted to Blick Rothenberg due to the energy and ambition of everyone I met, and most of all through the shared desire to effectively become an extension of the client businesses they served. This is exactly what I would have valued when I was in-house and how I intend to work going forward.”