Originally published: March 2024 When in-house tax professionals think about the long term, two of their most common questions are (1) will technological disruption (such as AI) mean that there will be less tax jobs in the future and (2) how will we be able to cope with ever increasing data required by tax authorities?… Continue reading

Blog post only Just like any other business, tax advice is a business driven mostly by unit economics. You need to sell something (tax advice) for more than its cost (salaries). You can increase competitiveness and profitability, if you can standardise and scale to create a recurring money making machine. If you are starting off… Continue reading

Originally published: January 2024 In a due diligence (DD) process, the adviser tries to find out problems with a business, mostly by asking management. Management knows the business intimately, but they have an interest for the business to look good, creating an obvious conflict of interest. You might think it’s a good idea to put… Continue reading

Blog post only People sometimes ask me for advice on how to upskill their M&A tax knowledge. Often, they go on asking how I picked up all this tax knowledge.  I never really know what to say to this. I learned my way of thinking by growing up in the Netherlands in a very strong… Continue reading

Originally published: November 2023 Anyone in the tax world will be familiar with ‘adviser speak’, the weird, unintelligible sentence structures that are the result of caveats, word-for-word copying of legislative texts and mostly copying of other adviser speak. Adviser speak is unnecessary and it hurts the impact of advice. As shown here, quotes don’t nearly… Continue reading

Originally published: June 2023 After all these advances in AI, should we let the machines take over tax work (https://lnkd.in/e7fXzEjj)? Or should we go back to humans? AI can be a useful tool in automating tasks, especially menial ones. But application of tax law is a judgement area, which requires moving beyond literal wording of… Continue reading

Originally published: May 2023 Some people have been asking me to comment on the Australian scandal where a Big Four advised the Australian government on new anti-abuse rules and then breached confidentiality requirements and prepared new structures that circumvent the new rules before the rules were even announced (https://lnkd.in/edvrdHQM). I don’t mind talking about difficult… Continue reading

Originally published: May 2023 It is an unwritten rule of M&A Tax that no one ever comments on detection risk. When M&A Tax professionals give risk ratings, they are tax technical risk ratings: the chance that the taxpayer would win if the position were challenged and decided by a tax court. The unwritten rule keeps… Continue reading

Originally published: April 2023 This blogpost by Rasmus Corlin Christensen (https://lnkd.in/ejK6egej) connects the dots on research on tax planning by MNEs and the role of tax advisers. I have dug into many pieces of research mentioned here and others were still on my list, as they represent an interesting perspective. But here, Rasmus concludes a lot of… Continue reading

Originally published: January 2023 Excellent deep dive by Blazej Kuzniacki, Ph.D. on many contradictions inherent in the European Commission (EC) ‘SAFE’ proposal, targeting ‘enablers’ of ‘aggressive tax planning’ (ATP). The EC considers the estimated revenue loss due to ATP ‘remains high’ and therefore, further action is needed. But although ATP has become an easy political shorthand… Continue reading