Deloitte launches Asia-Pacific tax initiative

Deloitte has launched an Asia-Pacific international core of excellence (AP ICE) initiative to provide more cohesive international tax services to clients.

The AP ICE will be made up of 21 senior tax professionals from 15 countries: Australia, Canada, China, France, Germany, India, Ireland, Japan, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Singapore, South Korea, Taiwan, the UK and the US.

The AP ICE will offer the following services:

• Reduction of foreign taxes;
• Optimisation of cash repatriation;
• Business restructures to reduce worldwide tax and to optimise foreign tax credits;
• Tax optimisation of supply chain-oriented business restructures;
• Use of intellectual property in a global enterprise;
• Tax-effective financing strategies;
• Business expansion planning, including choice of entity and capitalisation issues;
• Mergers, acquisitions, and divestitures; and,
• Tax treaty planning and interpretation.

Deloitte Global tax managing partner Dan Lange said the AP ICE was launched because of the increase in cross-border business activity in the Asia-Pacific region.

“The nature of highly integrated cross-border business activity gives rise to complicated jurisdictional issues and potential risks,” Lange said.

“We hope to provide a new level of integrated solutions to Asia-Pacific based companies investing abroad as well as multinational companies investing in the region.”

More than half of respondents to the AP ICE’s inaugural Asia Pacific Tax Complexity Forecast survey indicated that their companies had in the past exited or postponed entry to markets because of their concerns about tax complexity and consistency.

The Deloitte AP ICE survey gathered the opinions of 1,000 financial and tax professionals during April 2010.