Market report: corporate tax
According to Sandy Bhogal, co-chair of Gibson Dunn’s global tax practice, ‘General counsel will probably be more involved in tax affairs now than they’ve ever been’. With this in mind, he identifies three major trends in corporate tax that will keep lawyers busy for the foreseeable future: the knock on impact of the pandemic to tax policy, the general trend towards international governmental co-operation initiatives and the increasingly sophisticated and prominent way in which tax is covered in the media, leading corporates to view tax as an ESG issue.
Prior to 2020, increased international mobility was one of the main drivers behind tax policy, but the arrival of Covid-19, impacted this, as well as putting palpable strain on tax collection around the world. As such, in the UK, the corporation tax rate will rise from 19% to 25% in 2023. There were a number of tax issues that arose from the pandemic; most notably that people were physically restricted by lockdown and the world was a less mobile place.
