Tax

In this challenging economic times, every shilling saved counts. Companies across the world are quite keen on cutting costs, increasing operational efficiency and thus increasing profitability.

Among the expenses that companies have to pay tax. Failure by companies to pay their fair share of tax results to tax assessments, penalties, and interest.

Similarly, when the tax obligations for a company are not well managed, a company might end up paying more tax than they ought to. As such, companies need to strike a balance, that is, pay the correct amount for taxes.

Tax planning enables organisations to operate in a tax optimal manner and as such pay the correct tax.

• Are you paying more tax than you ought to?
• Is your organisation operating in a tax optimal manner?
• What is your effective tax rate?

Our tax teams have a diverse experience and have helped our clients integrate tax planning into their business operations. Our clients have realized significant tax savings, improved cash flow positions, increased working capital and reduced tax non-compliance risk.

Now, more than ever, tax needs to be an integral part of strategic business decisions.

Managing tax and statutory compliance is no longer an option. Unlike before, currently, regulators and administrators have heavily invested in the capacity of their officers and automated most if not all of their functions. Increased international trade, legislation of new tax laws, annual amendments to the existing tax laws, new accounting standards, and annual amendments to the accounting standards and increased demands from regulators/tax authorities are all redefining the scope of tax and finance functions.

This is in addition to the increased reporting and disclosure requirements by revenue authorities and regulators. This coupled with the economic meltdown has complicated the regulatory environment. As such, companies are looking for more innovative, cost-effective, consistent and sustainable means of managing and meeting their compliance obligations.

The SKM tax compliance management team has vast experience in assisting clients to manage and meet their obligations in an innovative, cost-effective, consistent and sustainable way.

Our services include:

• Tax compliance and related tax planning;
• Tax provision preparation;
• Statutory accounting, bookkeeping and payroll compliance; and
• Compliance process.

The budgets for most countries across the globe have been bulging at an increasing rate. As such, more than ever before revenue authorities, especially for those countries that rely on taxes quite significantly to finance their budget, are under immense pressure to collect more revenue. In a bid to collect more revenue and meet their targets, revenue authorities have increased taxpayer audit reviews and issuance of additional assessments to taxpayers whom they feel have underpaid taxes.

Our Tax Dispute Resolution teams assist clients manage KRA audits, prepare appropriate responses to the KRA queries, prepare objections against assessments, prepare Tax Appeals Tribunal documents, represent clients at the Tax Appeals Tribunal and spearhead a prompt resolution of the tax dispute.

Besides ‘Tax ’ legislation, companies have other legislation and regulations that provide how some processes and procedures should be carried out.

At SKM, with our proactive legal team, we can assist you with the following:

• Advice on legal form, incorporation, registration, reorganisation and winding up;
• Regulatory compliance review
• Contract review and advice.

International trade, investments, information technology and outsourced manufacturing have weaved the economies of diverse countries together. Essentially, we are increasingly experiencing the economic integration of global markets.

Globalization has been credited with helping shift wealth to less-developed countries. However, globalization is also often blamed for the loss of wealth from developed countries through inflated transfer pricing. Most multinationals entities have been on the receiving on this regard and most revenue authorities from developing nations have argued that the traditional transfer pricing documentation is not sufficient to assess whether cross-border transactions are in conformity with the arm’s length principle.

In response to this gap, the Organisation for Economic Cooperation Development developed Base Erosion and Profit Shifting (BEPS) action plans. This action plans have increased the disclosure and the reporting requirements for multinational entities.

Multinationals are therefore required to have a transfer pricing documentation and an up to date contemporaneous transfer pricing policy to support all their cross-border transactions.

Further, multinational are required under the BEPS action plans to comply with country by country reporting, maintain a local file and a master file and update their Transfer pricing policies every time there is a material change in the operating model or after every three years.

At SKM we help clients to develop contemporaneous defensible transfer pricing policies, document the policies and outcomes and assist clients to implement the transfer pricing. We also assist the client in depositing the transfer pricing policy with the Kenya revenue authority and responding to any questions raised therefrom.

SKM accredited tax trainers who are also certified tax trainers with Law Society of Kenya or/and the Institute of Certified Public Accountants of Kenya deliver customized tax trainings to our clients.

Our tax training programs are designed to meet the specific needs of our clients. We offer both in-house and off-site training programs.

Our trainings are differentiated by the following:

• We tailor our trainings to the specifics of our client needs;
• We are flexible and will train at the time and place convenient for our clients;
• We address the various tax issues in the context of the local and international economic circumstances affecting our clients;
• We provide reference training material;
• We offer Certificates of Participation to all the participants;
• We are accredited trainers with the Directorate of Industrial Training and as such registered participants with DITA can apply for reimbursements.