Tax

Different areas of tax law affect our clients’ activities, including income and corporation tax, VAT and (particularly in the past) stamp duty. At an international level, issues that arise in the context of IP transactions include seeking relief from taxation under double tax treaties, transfer pricing and the formation of offshore IP holding companies.

We have experience of assisting clients with specific, tax-related issues and queries. Given the breadth of tax law and the increasing levels of specialisation in this field, we focus on specific areas of tax, and can direct our clients to suitable specialists where required.

We are experienced at advising on tax-related work, examples include:

• setting up employee share option schemes, including drafting documentation, assistance with returns to HM Revenue and Customs (HMRC), and obtaining agreement of share valuations with HMRC;
• advising a university client on the tax treatment of revenue sharing arrangements with academic inventors, including taking tax counsel’s opinion;
• drafting consultancy-related agreements for a university consultancy company, including structuring terms to take account of advice from our client’s tax advisers; and
• providing an ‘in-house lawyer’ perspective on various tax planning schemes proposed by external advisers to our IT client.