One minute with Dave Murray, head of tax policy and sustainability at Anglo American.
What’s keeping you busy at work?
The biggest challenge in my job is understanding and balancing the needs of a diverse and evolving range of stakeholders. Their expectations on transparency and good governance continue to advance, and we try to stay ahead of them. We face continued disruption from the pandemic, as well as a range of other global challenges – such as digitalisation, climate change and geopolitical uncertainty – which makes it a fascinating time to be involved in tax policy, but also an incredibly busy one.
Alongside all of this change, there are opportunities to improve the system. I am particularly interested in the OECD’s work on tax and development, specifically on tax morale. There is a great opportunity here to build trust in the tax system and create a virtuous circle of increased cooperative compliance practices that can give taxpayers and tax administrations alike more certainty.
What does good tax governance entail?
Like all areas of governance, good tax governance will vary by organisation to reflect the values and purpose of the business and the needs of its stakeholders. For me, it requires clear direction from leadership, processes to determine and resolve areas of risk (broadly defined), and a string tax control framework with multiple layers of review.
We recently contributed to a discussion paper on good governance that was jointly prepared by the B-Team, Tax Executives Council and European Business Tax Forum (bit.ly/3RPBAbw), which is a great place for anyone interested in the topic to start.
What’s your approach to tax sustainability?
We see paying taxes in the countries in which we operate as both a vital contribution and critical to our license to operate. Sustainability permeates everything we do, and we have developed a detailed plan that identifies a number of ways that the group tax team can contribute to the group’s sustainability objectives, across all three pillars (healthy environment, thriving communities and trusted corporate leader).
However, it is the responsibility of modern tax teams not just to identify ways to help the business achieve its non-tax objectives, but also to identify areas where they can provide value to stakeholders in their own right. This includes things like good governance standards, transparency and purposeful engagement in tax policy. But to be sustainable, it must start with a good understanding of the needs of business’ stakeholders.
What do you know now that you wish you’d known at the start of your career?
That while it is nice to be more important, it is more important to be nice. Developing a close network of colleagues and friends in the industry has proved invaluable, and I am fortunate to have been repaid several times over for the times I have tried to help others.
If you could make one change to tax, what would it be?
It may be a copout, but I really would look to make tax more simple. The complexity in the tax system makes getting certainty very hard, which is not good for business or for tax administrations. It’s even less good for other stakeholders who can’t easily hold us to account if the system is not well understood. The Office of Tax Simplification has done some tremendous work, but it’s a shame that so few of its recommendations make the statute books.
You might not know this about me but...
I took a gap year between school and university, during which I became the country’s youngest licensee. My membership of the British Institute of Innkeeping has since been replaced with one for the ICAEW, but I still enjoy sampling exotic ales and playing cribbage!
One minute with Dave Murray, head of tax policy and sustainability at Anglo American.
What’s keeping you busy at work?
The biggest challenge in my job is understanding and balancing the needs of a diverse and evolving range of stakeholders. Their expectations on transparency and good governance continue to advance, and we try to stay ahead of them. We face continued disruption from the pandemic, as well as a range of other global challenges – such as digitalisation, climate change and geopolitical uncertainty – which makes it a fascinating time to be involved in tax policy, but also an incredibly busy one.
Alongside all of this change, there are opportunities to improve the system. I am particularly interested in the OECD’s work on tax and development, specifically on tax morale. There is a great opportunity here to build trust in the tax system and create a virtuous circle of increased cooperative compliance practices that can give taxpayers and tax administrations alike more certainty.
What does good tax governance entail?
Like all areas of governance, good tax governance will vary by organisation to reflect the values and purpose of the business and the needs of its stakeholders. For me, it requires clear direction from leadership, processes to determine and resolve areas of risk (broadly defined), and a string tax control framework with multiple layers of review.
We recently contributed to a discussion paper on good governance that was jointly prepared by the B-Team, Tax Executives Council and European Business Tax Forum (bit.ly/3RPBAbw), which is a great place for anyone interested in the topic to start.
What’s your approach to tax sustainability?
We see paying taxes in the countries in which we operate as both a vital contribution and critical to our license to operate. Sustainability permeates everything we do, and we have developed a detailed plan that identifies a number of ways that the group tax team can contribute to the group’s sustainability objectives, across all three pillars (healthy environment, thriving communities and trusted corporate leader).
However, it is the responsibility of modern tax teams not just to identify ways to help the business achieve its non-tax objectives, but also to identify areas where they can provide value to stakeholders in their own right. This includes things like good governance standards, transparency and purposeful engagement in tax policy. But to be sustainable, it must start with a good understanding of the needs of business’ stakeholders.
What do you know now that you wish you’d known at the start of your career?
That while it is nice to be more important, it is more important to be nice. Developing a close network of colleagues and friends in the industry has proved invaluable, and I am fortunate to have been repaid several times over for the times I have tried to help others.
If you could make one change to tax, what would it be?
It may be a copout, but I really would look to make tax more simple. The complexity in the tax system makes getting certainty very hard, which is not good for business or for tax administrations. It’s even less good for other stakeholders who can’t easily hold us to account if the system is not well understood. The Office of Tax Simplification has done some tremendous work, but it’s a shame that so few of its recommendations make the statute books.
You might not know this about me but...
I took a gap year between school and university, during which I became the country’s youngest licensee. My membership of the British Institute of Innkeeping has since been replaced with one for the ICAEW, but I still enjoy sampling exotic ales and playing cribbage!
