Retail and Consumer - Tax

Tax is high on the agenda for retail and consumer goods companies. For retailers, two key areas include optimising their VAT (Value Added Tax) position and planning property transactions to minimise the tax cost.
Increasingly retail and consumer companies are focusing on maximising value from their brands as part of strategic reviews of their businesses. Tax is an important part of this review. As for any company, tax is a key element in structuring an M&A (Mergers and Acquisitions) transaction in these sectors. With large workforces, as well as legislative changes, human resources planning is critical especially in managing employment taxes. exible benefits, share schemes and pensions.

  • Key tax issues for retail and consumer goods companies span insurance issues (which includes a global product liability and recall team).
  • We also support deal teams by conducting pre-deal M&A contract reviews and purchase price adjustment reviews.
  • The team is supported by our specialist forensic technology services laboratory which provides data mining skills, computer imaging, e-mail analysis and data and document management.
  • The team also conducts fraud risk management reviews and provides fraud awareness training as part of its ‘managing avoidable losses’ strategy.
The increasing onus of compliance, risk and Corporate Social Responsibility also presents new tax challenges. Companies can now give a fair indication of the total tax contribution they make to society by assessing and reporting the business taxes borne (e.g. corporation tax, business property rates), as well as those collected on behalf of the Government (e.g. payroll taxes).