In late 2021 Sarah Scala founded The Contentious Tax Group. Here Sarah explains why she decided to create the group and how it benefits both the industry and taxpayers.
In September 2021, I joined Claritas Tax to develop and lead its new Tax Dispute Resolution service line. I was excited by the autonomy my new role offered; however, I would need to build the service line before I could recruit, which meant I did not have tax dispute resolution colleagues with whom I could collaborate and discuss investigation strategy, for example.
To fill the gap, and with a view to securing new clients, I kept busy, meeting with other professionals working in the same field but I found myself having similar conversations day after day because the subject matter was the same; for example, HMRC’s focuses, the problems taxpayers were facing and how to solve them. I wondered if the individuals I was meeting one to one would be interested in meeting as a group, too. After all, many of the people I was meeting were most likely meeting each other anyway.
So The Contentious Tax Group was born, and the first monthly meeting took place in March 2022. The members consist of tax advisers and lawyers working in tax disputes, from across the UK. We meet face to face in London quarterly, with monthly Teams meetings in between.
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