Case Studies
How we helped our clients
Challenge
Preparing for public share issuance over year end.
Year end is all hands on deck but add the potential of going public and it can quickly become overwhelming. The client’s staff had little public company experience and needed someone to step in and independently work on the additional reporting work required.
Outcome
Armed with our proprietary toolkits we prepared:
- Tax provision and financial statement note disclosure
- Year end tax provision memo to the CFO which summarizes positions on material items within the provision for C-Suite and board discussion as required.
- Open years report outlining the tax filings that are statured barred, under audit, waivers signed, etc.
- Tax benefit memos outlining management’s rationale behind tax assets recorded
- Tax benefit memos outlining management’s rationale behind tax assets recorded
Challenge
Client had been extremely acquisitive completing more than 6 deals in two year exposing it compliance risk.
Outcome
Reading the steps/acquisition memos and due diligence reports, we built a comprehensive database of companies owned including tracing all predecessor companies. All the tax returns, notices of (re)assessment were stored in one central network location for future reference and the information entered into our “Open Years” report. We then analysed the entities acquired to determine what on-going tax compliance would be required by the client.
Challenge
Canadian subsidiary of US company undergoes major case tax audit.
Outcome
The US service company had four different business lines legally housed in one Canadian subsidiary which came under income tax and GST audit. The sole tax manager in Canada quickly became burdened with trying to manage the audit and maintain day to day tax work. We assisted the client with its audit strategy, researched and prepared answers to audit queries, attended meetings and permit the local tax manager to continue with current workload over the eight-month audit.
Challenge
No permanent head count for tax staff
Outcome
Our client a public P&C insurance company had no additional head count for a tax position, indeed there was insufficient work for a full time slot but the incremental tax work during reporting periods was borne by the controller. We dedicated one of our staff to become the company’s in-house, part-time tax staff who worked the reporting period and other projects as required; an arrangement that lasted five years.
Challenge
Broad spectrum tax knowledge on a part-time basis
Outcome
Our client a well-established private equity firm had diverse requests of a tax person: able to competently review steps/acquisition memos for issues, track investment costs, respond to tax authority queries, provide in-house professional development tax hours, manage and review annual tax filings for over 80 legal entities. Luckily for them – we have just such experienced staff – no training juniors on our watch! This arrangement lasted over ten years.
Challenge
Help in a hurry!
Outcome
When a senior manager at Canadian Bank lost two staff over a matter of weeks just before year-end he needed immediate assistance until a more permanent solution (replacing the staff) could happen. Seconding from the big four is an option but is often more costly in the end with a more junior person being allocated to you at a reduce firm rate. We provided the bank a short-term solution with an experienced tax professional for 20 hours a week until permanent staff was on-board.
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