Fiscal law

Tax is not a subject a business chooses to engage with; it is the reading an authority gives to decisions the business made for other reasons entirely. A restructuring, a loan between group companies, a company car, a move abroad — each is first a commercial choice and only afterwards a taxable event. The difficulty is rarely the rate. It is that the same set of facts can be characterised in more than one way, and the characterisation is what determines the bill.

Tax law also has a second face that most entrepreneurs never expect to see: an investigation, and the point at which a disagreement over figures becomes an allegation:

• the rules on how a transaction is characterised, and on the substance an arrangement must have;
• the rules on deductibility — what a business may set against its income and what it may not;
• the rules on transfer pricing and dealings between companies under common control;
• the rules on indirect taxes, cross-border supplies and the obligations that follow registration;
• the rules on withholding, and on income that is taxed in more than one country;
• the rules on filing, correction and the periods in which an authority may reopen a year;
• the rules on an audit — what may be requested, what must be produced, and what need not be;
• the rules on penalties, surcharges and negotiated settlement;
• the rules on where a tax dispute stops being administrative and becomes a criminal matter, and what changes when it does.

Our lawyers can support you in all these areas of law.