Driven by a confluence of fiscal, economic and accounting factors, a move towards disaggregating intangible assets from goodwill has quickly gathered pace. Jolyon Maugham examines the tax issues arising out of this process of disaggregation
I recently had cause to enquire of a senior accounting expert the cause of the sharpening of professional focus on the precise accounting characterisation of different types of intangible asset. Was it a function of the statutory regime for the taxation of those assets I asked? Was it that accountants faced commercial pressure to shift assets into more readily depreciable categories in order to reduce taxable trading profits? ‘No ’ he said. ‘It is only tax lawyers who are obsessed with generating losses. Most business people see benefit in enhancing their profits.’
Even so. That my unifying hypothesis for...
