One minute with Philip Harle, tax partner at Hogan Lovells and is chair of the City of London Law Society Revenue Law Committee.
What do you know now that you wish you’d known at the start of your career?
Today’s Bitcoin price! Seriously, I think it would have been helpful to know that over 20 years later I would still find tax, and legal practice generally, to be fascinating. It is like a real-life escape room. You are confronted with a riddle, wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma, sufficiently contrived to appear impossible unless you’re familiar with the rules of the game. But sometimes the door isn’t even locked! The rules are like a series of rabbit warrens. Many are long-abandoned dead-ends, the rabbits themselves are elusive and it doesn’t all join up properly. But all that makes the sense of achievement when you find a solution so satisfying. Better than an escape room, there are often multiple routes to the right answer, so it helps to build a team with diversity of thought. I would tell my younger self that doing it properly is as much about teamwork, empathy, communication and trust as it is about technical genius.
What would you say was the most important development in tax during your career so far?
Tax is becoming exponentially more joined-up internationally but there is also a polarisation into factions, mirroring the global geopolitical trend. Whilst not very interesting in itself, I think FATCA was the catalyst behind the more recent OECD initiatives which are bringing us closer to having a global tax code. The OECD CRS only works because it borrowed FATCA’s teeth. The fact that the US was able to unilaterally add a (hugely complex) tax reporting obligation to the laws of most countries in the world is remarkable. And the threat of withholding tax which applies to Russia and other countries that aren’t part of the FATCA network operates like sanctions and is obviously polarising.
If you could make one change to a tax law or practice, what would it be?
The question reminds me of the Blackadder episode where Blackadder pitches a single change to Prince George’s draft letter. The words! And I don’t mean changing the words whilst leaving the meaning the same like the Tax Law Rewrite Project (which was surely one of the most absurd wastes of effort in human history). I would change the whole thing, but I would do it slowly and with plenty of notice. Whatever you think of our current government (and I am definitely not going there), you have to admit to its success in creating a perceived tax cut out of thin air. Simply by promising to change the corporation tax rate from 19% to 19%, Liz Truss is seen as a great Libertarian! The future is a good battleground for tax debate. Doing it in ‘real time’ is much more disruptive to business.
Are there any new rules that are causing a problem?
I have been looking at the global minimum tax in my capacity as chair of the City of London Law Society’s Revenue Law Committee. It’s like the opposite of Lord Voldemort. Rather than having a name which everybody knows but is afraid to say, it has at least three names none of which anybody wants to use because they’re all a bit lame! Like FATCA, it is a riddle, wrapped in a mile-thick layer of clingfilm made from purest tedium, wrapped in a cluster bomb. Some say the problem with the minimum wage is that it becomes a sort of maximum wage. The global minimum tax includes its own summary global tax code and to the extent your country’s actual tax code deviates, the minimum tax can eat your lunch. It is not difficult to see it evolving into a de facto global tax code. Before that we might have a period of peak complexity.
Finally, you might not know this about me but...
When I was a teenager, I wrote two self-published computer games for the Commodore Amiga which at the time lived on floppy disks but are now online. I have found the thought processes developed through the discipline of coding invaluable when play-testing tax covenants!
One minute with Philip Harle, tax partner at Hogan Lovells and is chair of the City of London Law Society Revenue Law Committee.
What do you know now that you wish you’d known at the start of your career?
Today’s Bitcoin price! Seriously, I think it would have been helpful to know that over 20 years later I would still find tax, and legal practice generally, to be fascinating. It is like a real-life escape room. You are confronted with a riddle, wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma, sufficiently contrived to appear impossible unless you’re familiar with the rules of the game. But sometimes the door isn’t even locked! The rules are like a series of rabbit warrens. Many are long-abandoned dead-ends, the rabbits themselves are elusive and it doesn’t all join up properly. But all that makes the sense of achievement when you find a solution so satisfying. Better than an escape room, there are often multiple routes to the right answer, so it helps to build a team with diversity of thought. I would tell my younger self that doing it properly is as much about teamwork, empathy, communication and trust as it is about technical genius.
What would you say was the most important development in tax during your career so far?
Tax is becoming exponentially more joined-up internationally but there is also a polarisation into factions, mirroring the global geopolitical trend. Whilst not very interesting in itself, I think FATCA was the catalyst behind the more recent OECD initiatives which are bringing us closer to having a global tax code. The OECD CRS only works because it borrowed FATCA’s teeth. The fact that the US was able to unilaterally add a (hugely complex) tax reporting obligation to the laws of most countries in the world is remarkable. And the threat of withholding tax which applies to Russia and other countries that aren’t part of the FATCA network operates like sanctions and is obviously polarising.
If you could make one change to a tax law or practice, what would it be?
The question reminds me of the Blackadder episode where Blackadder pitches a single change to Prince George’s draft letter. The words! And I don’t mean changing the words whilst leaving the meaning the same like the Tax Law Rewrite Project (which was surely one of the most absurd wastes of effort in human history). I would change the whole thing, but I would do it slowly and with plenty of notice. Whatever you think of our current government (and I am definitely not going there), you have to admit to its success in creating a perceived tax cut out of thin air. Simply by promising to change the corporation tax rate from 19% to 19%, Liz Truss is seen as a great Libertarian! The future is a good battleground for tax debate. Doing it in ‘real time’ is much more disruptive to business.
Are there any new rules that are causing a problem?
I have been looking at the global minimum tax in my capacity as chair of the City of London Law Society’s Revenue Law Committee. It’s like the opposite of Lord Voldemort. Rather than having a name which everybody knows but is afraid to say, it has at least three names none of which anybody wants to use because they’re all a bit lame! Like FATCA, it is a riddle, wrapped in a mile-thick layer of clingfilm made from purest tedium, wrapped in a cluster bomb. Some say the problem with the minimum wage is that it becomes a sort of maximum wage. The global minimum tax includes its own summary global tax code and to the extent your country’s actual tax code deviates, the minimum tax can eat your lunch. It is not difficult to see it evolving into a de facto global tax code. Before that we might have a period of peak complexity.
Finally, you might not know this about me but...
When I was a teenager, I wrote two self-published computer games for the Commodore Amiga which at the time lived on floppy disks but are now online. I have found the thought processes developed through the discipline of coding invaluable when play-testing tax covenants!
