One minute with Casey Dalton, Partner at Herbert Smith Freehills Kramer.
What’s keeping you busy at work?
REITs! We have recently seen lots of clients converting existing structures into REITs or setting up new REITs as part of JV arrangements. I have also been doing a lot of real estate investment fund structuring work which has been great and an early opportunity to work closely with my new tax partners in Luxembourg and New York following our recent combination and Luxembourg office opening.
What do you know now that you wish you’d known at the start of your career?
The importance of taking time over relationships and building connections. At the beginning of my career, I was so focused on just delivering good work and then getting out of the office to live my ‘normal life’; there was a quite a big gap between the ‘me’ at work and the ‘me’ at home. But then I realised that in order to get to know clients and colleagues, and for them to trust you, you have to be open to sharing a bit about yourself too – it can’t just be a one-way street. It makes me so happy to see our team now really enjoying each other’s company and being a core part of each other’s support systems – we aren’t meant to do this alone!
If you could make one change to tax, what would it be?
Ever since I was a trainee in tax, I have found the archaic patch-work of stamp duty legislation unnecessarily complicated and something which can take up a lot of adviser time without adding real value to a transaction; often it feels like you are just spending time finding a way around a problem which shouldn’t really be there in the first place. So, I have really welcomed the recent stamp tax consultation and I’m looking forward to seeing those proposals coming into effect (the sooner the better, though it sounds like we’ll be waiting till 2027). If I had a magic wand, I would also retrospectively abolish stamp duty at the same time so we never had to fear finding a ‘resting on contract’ scheme in historic structures ever again!
Has a recent tax case caught your eye?
I’m looking forward to hearing the outcome of the Hotel la Tour appeal to the Supreme Court. The development of VAT recovery on deal fees (both buy side and sell side) has been an interesting one throughout my time in tax and if Hotel la Tour succeeds in its appeal, that could have significant implications not just for VAT recovery in M&A transactions, but also with wider questions of attribution which may generally help businesses improve their VAT recovery. Even if the appeal is not successful, we might get some additional insight from the Supreme Court on how to best position clients to support their VAT recovery going forward.
Finally, you might not know this about me but…
I’m a qualified yoga teacher! Yoga and mindfulness help me stay balanced while working in a high-performance, high-pressure environment. I don’t teach currently as nearly all my time and energy outside of work is used up by my kids but I’m looking forward to picking it up again in the future.
One minute with Casey Dalton, Partner at Herbert Smith Freehills Kramer.
What’s keeping you busy at work?
REITs! We have recently seen lots of clients converting existing structures into REITs or setting up new REITs as part of JV arrangements. I have also been doing a lot of real estate investment fund structuring work which has been great and an early opportunity to work closely with my new tax partners in Luxembourg and New York following our recent combination and Luxembourg office opening.
What do you know now that you wish you’d known at the start of your career?
The importance of taking time over relationships and building connections. At the beginning of my career, I was so focused on just delivering good work and then getting out of the office to live my ‘normal life’; there was a quite a big gap between the ‘me’ at work and the ‘me’ at home. But then I realised that in order to get to know clients and colleagues, and for them to trust you, you have to be open to sharing a bit about yourself too – it can’t just be a one-way street. It makes me so happy to see our team now really enjoying each other’s company and being a core part of each other’s support systems – we aren’t meant to do this alone!
If you could make one change to tax, what would it be?
Ever since I was a trainee in tax, I have found the archaic patch-work of stamp duty legislation unnecessarily complicated and something which can take up a lot of adviser time without adding real value to a transaction; often it feels like you are just spending time finding a way around a problem which shouldn’t really be there in the first place. So, I have really welcomed the recent stamp tax consultation and I’m looking forward to seeing those proposals coming into effect (the sooner the better, though it sounds like we’ll be waiting till 2027). If I had a magic wand, I would also retrospectively abolish stamp duty at the same time so we never had to fear finding a ‘resting on contract’ scheme in historic structures ever again!
Has a recent tax case caught your eye?
I’m looking forward to hearing the outcome of the Hotel la Tour appeal to the Supreme Court. The development of VAT recovery on deal fees (both buy side and sell side) has been an interesting one throughout my time in tax and if Hotel la Tour succeeds in its appeal, that could have significant implications not just for VAT recovery in M&A transactions, but also with wider questions of attribution which may generally help businesses improve their VAT recovery. Even if the appeal is not successful, we might get some additional insight from the Supreme Court on how to best position clients to support their VAT recovery going forward.
Finally, you might not know this about me but…
I’m a qualified yoga teacher! Yoga and mindfulness help me stay balanced while working in a high-performance, high-pressure environment. I don’t teach currently as nearly all my time and energy outside of work is used up by my kids but I’m looking forward to picking it up again in the future.
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