EU introduces residency protection measures to displaced population of Ukraine.
Day: March 17, 2022
As the Taxman five-part series nears the end, Tom Fox and Tracy Howell tackle an important topic that has become more prominent over the years: tax and supply chain.
How Tax Can Help Supply Chain
Supply chain in a traditional sense focuses on the acquisition of goods, in particular the quality, cost, and delivery. There can be a substantial tax component in each of those steps to help companies attain goods at the lowest possible cost. Consequently, if supply chain does not have a relationship with tax, it can result in additional surprise costs being attached to goods. Data beyond the cost of goods, material, and service can be used to model and predict the additional tax burden so that better procurement decisions can be made.
Mitigating the Risk of Mission Creep
Establishing a connection between tax and supply chain in an organization is good, but the relationship needs to be kept fresh for a positive impact. In a company, people may be focused on so many different things that they forget to interact. Creative people tend to expand their roles and look for goods and services in different locations, which can be the cause of a mission creep. Hence, having constant close interaction between supply chain and tax allows for changes in functionality to be documented and implemented into the organizational framework.
Elements of a Tax-Efficient Supply Chain
Tom and Tracy discuss the elements of a tax-efficient supply chain. This includes:
- Examination of the entire scope of what’s being manufactured and sold to allow the creation of tax opportunities to bring value based on special purpose entities.
- Coordination of transactions in a supply chain with transfer pricing.
- Compliance with tax laws and regulations.
- Documentation of the process.
In this episode of the FCPA Compliance Report, I am joined by Erica Salmon Byrne, President of Ethisphere. We discuss the announcement of Ethisphere’s 2022 World Most Ethical Companies awards. This year’s most stunning announcement is a 5-year Ethics Premium of 24.6%. Other highlights in include:
- A deep dive into the Ethics Premium, including the reasons for the dramatic growth of the past 5 years.
- 2022 had the highest number of new companies on the list. Who were some of these first-time honorees? The non-US centric number of honorees.
- The Ethics Quotient-how is it calculated?
- Why is the Ethics Quotient such a powerful tool for the compliance professional?
- How to get your company involved in the World’s Most Ethical Companies process.
Categories
The Case of the Rogue Employee
Jonathan Armstrong and Tom Fox return for another episode of Life with GDPR. In the 2020 Morrisons case the UK Supreme Court ruled that an employer can be legally responsible for data breaches caused by their employees, although in the particular situation in that case the court ruled that Morrisons (the employer) was not liable for the actions of their rogue employee. In this episode, Tom and Jonathan look at the more recent case of Isma Ali v. Luton Borough Council where the High Court ruled that in committing the data security breach actions the rogue employee undertook, she had solely pursued her own interests and so the employer was not liable for her conduct. Some of the issues we consider include:
1. What were the underlying facts of the case?
2. What was the court’s ruling?
3. Key Takeaways for the data privacy, data protection practitioner, including:
· Take a close look at security measures and ensuring that access rights are policed. Data loss prevention and monitoring systems should also be in place to check for large data files leaving the organization – depending on the circumstances, a rogue employee might be after a lot of data;
· Put in place appropriate policies and procedures to make sure that data protection principles like data security and data minimization are properly understood;
· Perform a Data Protection Impact Assessment for new processes;
· Make sure that employees in trusted roles are reliable and that their access rights are reviewed.
· Put in place and rehearse a data breach notification procedure, including detection and response capabilities;
· Training staff on all of the above; and,
· Check existing insurance or taking out new insurance to cover the range of potential risks from “innocent” errors to the actions of a rogue employee.
Resources
Check out the Cordery Compliance, client alert on this topic, click here. For more information on Cordery Compliance, go their website here. Also check out the GDPR Navigator, one of the top resources for GDPR Compliance by clicking here.
In today’s edition of Daily Compliance News:
- Ethisphere announces 2022 World’s Most Ethical Companies. (Ethisphere Press Release)
- Interpol has new center to fight financial crimes. (OCCRP)
- SEC Commissioner Lee to step down. (Reuters)
- Big 4 under regulatory scrutiny. (WSJ)
Categories
Tax and Compliance: Tax and Supply Chain
What is the intersection of tax and compliance? Why does a Chief Compliance Officer (CCO) or compliance professional need to sit down with the corporate head of tax? How does a corporate tax function fit into a best practices compliance program? It turns out there is quite a bit a compliance professional can learn from a tax professional. Moreover, there are many aspects of tax which should be considered by a CCO and compliance professional from an overall risk management perspective. Unfortunately, these questions are rarely explored in the compliance community.
To explore these issues (and remedy this lack of awareness) I recently sat down with noted tax professional Tracy Howell to explore these and other questions. We tackled these issues and others in a five-part podcast series for Innovation in Compliance. Today, we consider the role of tax in the Supply Chain. We also expand that to compliance, because compliance also has a huge role in this area.
| Obviously, this topic has become more prominent over the last couple of years during the pandemic. Over the past couple of weeks, with the Russia invasion of Ukraine, it has become even more hyper-critical. One of the things we saw in the pandemic was that many companies with long established Supply Chains, perhaps not single source suppliers, but close to single source suppliers, found themselves scrambling when huge swaths. With the Russian invasion of Ukraine, we have had the largest amount of economic sanctions delivered by any administration in the modern era. Companies are struggling with not only responding to the sanctions but responding to the business dislocation from Russia and Belarus to Ukraine and into eastern Europe. Clearly Supply Chain is critical for an organization, especially an organization that manufactures and has any substantial delivery of materials and services. There is also the question of where the highest risk in your Supply Chain might be. Is it in the critical component(s) in the acquisition of goods? Is it in the delivery of services? Or is it simply in the manufacturing process itself? Moreover, if you think of Supply Chains as only having a traditional focus on the acquisition of goods, comprising both the quality of the goods and the cost of the goods, and concluding with the delivery of the goods for consumption or later sale; you are missing a key component. That key component is tax and as Howell stated, “there can be a substantial tax component in each one of those steps of acquisition costs. If you are buying goods in foreign jurisdictions that can be transaction taxes, such as GST or VAT.” Howell provided the following example. “If a company’s buying raw materials in a third country, in the shipping terms, we’d normally say title transfers in international waters, that’s a good thing for the buyer. Because that means if I’m buying something and I take title in international waters, it should not trigger any transaction taxes. However, if you are not paying attention to where you acquire goods from and then you take title within the country of origin’s territory, guess what? That could trigger up to a VAT liability of 15 to 20%. This means that if your Supply Chain is not interacting or does not have a relationship with tax, and the taxes can add a 15% to 20% component to the cost of goods in a transaction, which dramatically impacts the company’s cost of goods sold (COGS).” However, if there is a good relationship between tax and Supply Chain, there can also be additional benefits tax brought to the fore and such benefits are more critical in 2022 and beyond because they can help a company plan for disruptions in the supply chain. For instance, if Supply Chain looks for alternative suppliers, or a different geo-region for component parts, tax can step in and do an analysis that would at least give them an estimate of what the tax costs are going to be. Howell said that tax can provide “Supply Chain with the data that is beyond the cost of good, or the cost of material, or the cost of service. A tax professional can do so by modeling out the liability that a multinational could incur, including up to five different possible sources for goods and materials. From there you can extend your model out to see what the additional tax burden would be in each one of those scenarios. From there you can check to see if there are any tax incentives that either exist or that your organization can go negotiate.” But the risk management that tax can bring to Supply Chain does not end there; particularly once tax and Supply Chain have established a relationship and it is understood how tax can assist Supply Chain in the procurement of goods and services. Through a documented process, it creates and entire framework for the organization to use going forward because at any given time Supply Chain will be looking for goods and services in different locations. Howell said, “you can have a mission creep. It is important for tax to have that relationship with Supply Chain so as their functionality changes and your organization is acquiring new goods in different locations, you can document the changes, and update your framework as needed when new tax issues can come to play.” |
Join us tomorrow for our concluding post when we consider the role of tax in a corporate ESG program. Check out the full podcast series Taxman: On the Intersection of Tax and Compliance on the Compliance Podcast Network. Check out Tracy Howell on LinkedIn.
