We all know that feeling: we have a rough idea, think this might be a great opportunity, but we don’t have enough information to assess the risks.

Many questions with no clear answers, one of them being “How to start and make it work tax-wise?”

If you have an investment project or a business plan in mind, do not hesitate to get in touch early. Together, we can quantify many of the unknown variables and reduce the risks significantly.

You make a deal, your attorney prepares the contract and we make sure that tax matters are treated correctly and that your accounting department can handle all related issues.

This way, many misunderstandings and unpleasant surprises can be avoided.

If you are buying a house, a nice garden view and an impressive entrance stairway simply aren’t enough. Knowing the technical condition of the property from top to bottom is as important as learning of any potential legal defects. The same goes for a business shareholding acquisition: pigs in pokes and tax skeletons in the closet have no place in important investment transactions.

We will keep a sharp eye on those for you.

Do you trade within your holding structure? Do you have subsidiaries or a foreign owner? Do you have credit, licensing or any other business relations with a capital- or management-related entity? Then you can hardly do without good transfer pricing documentation these days.

We can help.

Filling in all kinds of tax return forms is nobody’s idea of fun. We navigate this area like aircraft pilots: apart from the fascinating take-offs and smooth landings, we also need to handle those boring hours of flight in between – including the occasional bad weather or other stressful situations.

What counts is the satisfaction that comes with good results: the figures in the tax returns come from an in-depth knowledge of legislation and interpretative opinions coupled with meticulous preparation.

Every accounting department should run like clockwork. We know how to make sure yours does, too. An accountant needs to receive correct and complete input data, process it correctly and report it correctly. We will help in each of these three stages.

We love working on projects with implications in intellectual property, copyright or trade with intangible assets. The world of intellectual property and licensing is an astonishing one: you cannot see or touch it, yet it is often incredibly valuable, and not only in terms of money.

This world has specific tax issues: it may be relatively easy to prove to the tax authorities that you bought a house or sold shares. But why do you pay license fees for a utility model or trade mark and why in that particular amount?

We often work with property valuation experts and an auditor in these cases.

Procedure” is treated as a stand-alone discipline by both lawyers and tax advisers, and an interesting and very important discipline at that.

It certainly is not a good idea to trust that your head of accounting and CFO can “survive” a tax inspection or other tax proceedings if they are well versed in VAT but have rarely encountered the tax procedure code and related case law. Especially since just about anyone can become “party to a carousel fraud” these days.

Please contact us if you feel you may need an agent to act on your behalf when dealing with tax authorities.

In tax cases the stakes are usually high, not just in terms of money. We provide expert reports on tax affairs in criminal and civil proceedings and in other situations our reports are used by government bodies, individuals and their attorneys, liquidators and insolvency administrators.