I have several clients looking to raise investment funds with various strategies – they include a couple of buyout funds, a direct lending fund, a trade receivables fund and a credit opportunities fund. I am also helping a client restructure a portfolio of fund investments they have, and another client is being given a stake in an asset management business which is proving tricky to structure efficiently. Finally, I have a US based client who is setting up a London office for the first time. Having recently moved firms, I am also taking as much time as I can to get to know my new colleagues and clients.
If you could make one change to tax, what would it be?
I would remove the national insurance differential between employed and self-employed status. There doesn’t seem to be a good policy reason for the difference, and I dread to think about the number of person-hours spent by advisers from all parts of the industry trying to help their clients work out which side of the line they fall on, not to mention the behavioural changes it must incentivise.
If this proves too difficult politically, maybe we could just combine all UK tax legislation into a single tax statute that gets updated as needed, rather than having the legislation appear in multiple different statutes.
What do you know now that you wish you’d known at the start of your career?
Lots! But one thing that springs to mind is that what interests a tax adviser is not always the same as what clients are willing to pay him or her to advise on. Tax law throws up all kinds of interesting technical questions, which is probably what drove a lot of us to become advisers. Unfortunately, clients are not usually interested in answering such questions unless there is no other way of approaching things.
It also took me a while to appreciate the difference between the roles of the adviser and principal. I enjoy working in a team so much that I used to view the client’s problems as my own, but I’ve come to realise that investing oneself into the task emotionally in this way can lead to bad advice, which is ultimately not what clients want.
What issues have been clients been raising recently?
I’m sure I’m not alone, but some of my investment fund clients are showing increasing interest in the use of the UK’s new qualifying asset holding company (QAHC) regime. I think the regime is a positive development for the UK asset management industry, and although there have been teething problems identified, the government has shown willingness to amend the legislation to fix such problems where necessary.
Which measures in the latest Finance Bill caught your eye?
I’d been looking out for further details on the implementation of BEPS 2.0, including the UK’s implementation of Pillar Two. Without me really realising it, BEPS 1.0 created ten years of work for me, which is surprising given that most of my clients are asset managers or funds, who were not the primary target of the rules. BEPS 2.0 may not be quite as dramatic for my clients, but I suspect that it will have plenty of unintended consequences for the funds industry, so I am gearing myself up to go again.
Finally, you might not know this about me but...
I often get told that I have a brilliant name for a tax lawyer, but not many people know that is a bastardisation of the French name ‘Monet’. Apparently, a group of Monets settled in Herefordshire hundreds of years ago but it didn’t take long for the name to become anglicised, and the rest is history. I should say that I have never lived in Herefordshire, and I am not aware of any link to Claude Monet, but you never know.
I have several clients looking to raise investment funds with various strategies – they include a couple of buyout funds, a direct lending fund, a trade receivables fund and a credit opportunities fund. I am also helping a client restructure a portfolio of fund investments they have, and another client is being given a stake in an asset management business which is proving tricky to structure efficiently. Finally, I have a US based client who is setting up a London office for the first time. Having recently moved firms, I am also taking as much time as I can to get to know my new colleagues and clients.
If you could make one change to tax, what would it be?
I would remove the national insurance differential between employed and self-employed status. There doesn’t seem to be a good policy reason for the difference, and I dread to think about the number of person-hours spent by advisers from all parts of the industry trying to help their clients work out which side of the line they fall on, not to mention the behavioural changes it must incentivise.
If this proves too difficult politically, maybe we could just combine all UK tax legislation into a single tax statute that gets updated as needed, rather than having the legislation appear in multiple different statutes.
What do you know now that you wish you’d known at the start of your career?
Lots! But one thing that springs to mind is that what interests a tax adviser is not always the same as what clients are willing to pay him or her to advise on. Tax law throws up all kinds of interesting technical questions, which is probably what drove a lot of us to become advisers. Unfortunately, clients are not usually interested in answering such questions unless there is no other way of approaching things.
It also took me a while to appreciate the difference between the roles of the adviser and principal. I enjoy working in a team so much that I used to view the client’s problems as my own, but I’ve come to realise that investing oneself into the task emotionally in this way can lead to bad advice, which is ultimately not what clients want.
What issues have been clients been raising recently?
I’m sure I’m not alone, but some of my investment fund clients are showing increasing interest in the use of the UK’s new qualifying asset holding company (QAHC) regime. I think the regime is a positive development for the UK asset management industry, and although there have been teething problems identified, the government has shown willingness to amend the legislation to fix such problems where necessary.
Which measures in the latest Finance Bill caught your eye?
I’d been looking out for further details on the implementation of BEPS 2.0, including the UK’s implementation of Pillar Two. Without me really realising it, BEPS 1.0 created ten years of work for me, which is surprising given that most of my clients are asset managers or funds, who were not the primary target of the rules. BEPS 2.0 may not be quite as dramatic for my clients, but I suspect that it will have plenty of unintended consequences for the funds industry, so I am gearing myself up to go again.
Finally, you might not know this about me but...
I often get told that I have a brilliant name for a tax lawyer, but not many people know that is a bastardisation of the French name ‘Monet’. Apparently, a group of Monets settled in Herefordshire hundreds of years ago but it didn’t take long for the name to become anglicised, and the rest is history. I should say that I have never lived in Herefordshire, and I am not aware of any link to Claude Monet, but you never know.
