ARQ Group taking an active role at the International Tax Congress in London

Congress to bring together senior international tax leaders, policy makers and leading advisors

ARQ Group is one of the sponsors for this year’s International Tax Congress that will take place on June 21st and 22nd in London. The International Tax Congress 2017 will include expert panel sessions, unique case studies, thought provoking keynotes and excellent networking opportunities spread over the two days.

The main topic for this year’s International Tax Congress will be BEPS, an OECD project to combat Base Erosion and Profit Shifting and to ensure that profits are taxed where economic activities take place and value is created. Following the release of a report in February 2013 – “Addressing Base Erosion and Profit Shifting”, the OECD and G20 Countries adopted a 15-point Action Plan with the key 3 pillars including introducing coherence in the domestic rules that affect cross-border activities; reinforcing substance requirement in existing international standards and improving Transparency as well as Certainty.

Nicky Gouder, Tax Partner at ARQ Group will be moderating a panel discussion entitled: “The reality of BEPS: Implementation in Practice”. Commenting, Nicky said: “One of the biggest difficulties of the BEPS Projects is its implementation – over 100 countries are expected to implement the BEPS ‘recommendations’. The panel will be discussing exactly this – the difficulties which jurisdictions will face when implementing the Action Plans. We will be touching upon the Multi-Lateral Instrument (MLI) which has been developed, and agreed to by more than 100 jurisdictions, that will swiftly implement a series of tax treaty measures to update international tax issues. We will also be getting into the problems which could arise with the implementation of the BEPS Action Plans if done so in an unharmonised manner by different jurisdictions – will this create further confusion rather than the Certainty which is so important for investors and which is one of the BEPS pillars. The Anti-Tax Avoidance Directive (ATAD), and now ATAD II, which is EU’s response to BEPS, possibly solves the issue of implementation due to the fact that, being a Directive, it must be implemented by each Member State– however, the ATAD also provides for certain options for implementation. It has also been said, that on certain points, ATAD goes beyond BEPS – this will also certainly be discussed at the International Tax Congress”.

The Congress Agenda also includes other tax topics such as European Holding and CFC regimes, Taxation of IP, Patent Box Regimes and the latest developments in Global Transfer Pricing. Expert speakers at the Congress will include top international tax leaders such as Anna Elphick, VP Group Tax, Africa & Asia at Unilever; David Campkin, Group Tax Manager at BBC; Bandhana Jakhu, Head of Indirect Tax, Tax Risk and Tax Transformation at the London Stock Exchange Group; David Kelly, International Tax Manager at Dell and Ed Turner, Head of Tax Product at HSBC amongst others.

For more information on the International Tax Congress, please visit https://finance.knect365.com/international-tax-congress/.