One minute with Jasmin Bryan, head of tax at L&Q Group.
What’s keeping you busy at work at the moment?
In the last 18 months, the L&Q Group completed a large-scale merger with East Thames and acquired the Gallagher Estates business, so in addition to the day to day tax advice and support my team provides to colleagues across the business on operational activities and property transactions, there’s also plenty to keep me busy as a direct result of these two sizeable transactions.
What’s the key tax challenge facing your industry sector?
As is the case for all charitable organisations, tax is a cost that directly ;reduces the funds we have available to meet our charitable purposes; for L&Q, this impacts our ability to deliver more affordable homes. The challenge for us is to ensure that we pay the right amount of tax, whilst at the same time fulfilling ;our obligation to beneficiaries, both current and future, to be efficient with our tax affairs. I have always believed the UK has, rightly so, a generous tax regime for charities. At L&Q, we have a duty to our beneficiaries to ensure that we’re claiming the tax reliefs, allowances and exemptions that we’re properly entitled to claim, and that we’re actively seeking to mitigate tax through appropriate planning. However, the tax environment in which we’re operating has changed hugely over the last few years in terms of how charities are perceived, how we’re expected to manage our tax affairs and the level of scrutiny we face. So it’s equally important that we can demonstrate to our stakeholders that any tax planning we undertake is commercially driven and aligned to achieving our charitable purposes.
Are there any new rules that are causing a particular problem?
The introduction of making tax digital for VAT is making us scratch our heads quite a lot at the moment, as I think it will be for many other partially exempt businesses. The window of time between now and April 2019 when the new rules are set to take effect seems unrealistically short given that the HMRC pilot for small businesses only started on 11 April 2018, and more complex businesses won’t be piloted until later this autumn. It’s really difficult for us to fully assess our options, and for the tax team to properly engage with the wider business on what’s coming and how it impacts them from a practical perspective, when the market for ‘functional compatible software’ is currently limited and many software developers still seem to be in the testing phase.
What’s your view on outsourcing of tax work? How do you strike the right balance between keeping control in-house and outsourcing?
This is an interesting question for me. L&Q is my first in-house role having spent the last 18 years working in practice, so to be honest I’m still in the ;process of establishing exactly what ‘the right balance’ looks and feels like from this side of the fence! That said, I think the key to effective outsourcing is a proper understanding of the in-house tax knowledge and expertise and how the business uses this to best effect. The relationships we then have with external advisers should complement the skills and experience of the in-house team.
And finally, you might not know this about me but…
I seem to have a bad habit of signing myself up for outdoor obstacle races which invariably seem to take place in very cold, wet conditions, but it does mean I can proudly call myself a Tough Mudder and a member of Team ;Nuts! Although after the ordeal and bruises of the last event, I’m thinking it might now be the right time to hang up my muddy trainers and retire while I’m still in one piece.
One minute with Jasmin Bryan, head of tax at L&Q Group.
What’s keeping you busy at work at the moment?
In the last 18 months, the L&Q Group completed a large-scale merger with East Thames and acquired the Gallagher Estates business, so in addition to the day to day tax advice and support my team provides to colleagues across the business on operational activities and property transactions, there’s also plenty to keep me busy as a direct result of these two sizeable transactions.
What’s the key tax challenge facing your industry sector?
As is the case for all charitable organisations, tax is a cost that directly ;reduces the funds we have available to meet our charitable purposes; for L&Q, this impacts our ability to deliver more affordable homes. The challenge for us is to ensure that we pay the right amount of tax, whilst at the same time fulfilling ;our obligation to beneficiaries, both current and future, to be efficient with our tax affairs. I have always believed the UK has, rightly so, a generous tax regime for charities. At L&Q, we have a duty to our beneficiaries to ensure that we’re claiming the tax reliefs, allowances and exemptions that we’re properly entitled to claim, and that we’re actively seeking to mitigate tax through appropriate planning. However, the tax environment in which we’re operating has changed hugely over the last few years in terms of how charities are perceived, how we’re expected to manage our tax affairs and the level of scrutiny we face. So it’s equally important that we can demonstrate to our stakeholders that any tax planning we undertake is commercially driven and aligned to achieving our charitable purposes.
Are there any new rules that are causing a particular problem?
The introduction of making tax digital for VAT is making us scratch our heads quite a lot at the moment, as I think it will be for many other partially exempt businesses. The window of time between now and April 2019 when the new rules are set to take effect seems unrealistically short given that the HMRC pilot for small businesses only started on 11 April 2018, and more complex businesses won’t be piloted until later this autumn. It’s really difficult for us to fully assess our options, and for the tax team to properly engage with the wider business on what’s coming and how it impacts them from a practical perspective, when the market for ‘functional compatible software’ is currently limited and many software developers still seem to be in the testing phase.
What’s your view on outsourcing of tax work? How do you strike the right balance between keeping control in-house and outsourcing?
This is an interesting question for me. L&Q is my first in-house role having spent the last 18 years working in practice, so to be honest I’m still in the ;process of establishing exactly what ‘the right balance’ looks and feels like from this side of the fence! That said, I think the key to effective outsourcing is a proper understanding of the in-house tax knowledge and expertise and how the business uses this to best effect. The relationships we then have with external advisers should complement the skills and experience of the in-house team.
And finally, you might not know this about me but…
I seem to have a bad habit of signing myself up for outdoor obstacle races which invariably seem to take place in very cold, wet conditions, but it does mean I can proudly call myself a Tough Mudder and a member of Team ;Nuts! Although after the ordeal and bruises of the last event, I’m thinking it might now be the right time to hang up my muddy trainers and retire while I’m still in one piece.
