Two awards for company tax functions – one for direct, the other for indirect – have been a feature of the annual European Tax Awards in recent years. For 2013, these categories have been divided by size so there will be presentations for departments of up to 10 and more than 10 staff.
The shortlists are here.
The shortlists for the in-house awards will be announced on April 5, but the nominations in the national and European categories for private-practice advisers have been announced today.
Ten firms have been shortlisted for the European Tax Firm of the Year award. These comprise the big-four professional services firms of Ernst & Young, Deloitte, KPMG and PwC; the European part of the global Taxand network and the law firms of Baker & McKenzie, DLA Piper, Flick Gocke Schaumburg and Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer.
Bonelli Erede & Pappalardo, Bredin Prat, De Brauw Blackstone Westbroek, Hengeler Mueller, Slaughter and May, and Uría Menéndez have also been nominated for the same award under the title of the Best Friends Tax Network.
Deloitte have been nominated for national transfer pricing firm of the year in 20 jurisdictions. They are closely followed by Ernst & Young with 19. PwC and Taxand come next with seven each and KPMG have four. DLA Piper have been nominated in three jurisdictions and Grant Thornton and Mayer Brown have two nominations each.
For national tax firm of the year, Deloitte has been shortlisted in 24 countries, Ernst & Young in 17, Taxand in 14, KPMG in five and PwC in four. Among law firms, DLA Piper has been nominated in 11 countries, Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer in seven, and Linklaters and Hogan Lovells in six each.
The awards are in their eighth year and will be presented at the Dorchester Hotel in London on May 15. The winners and runners-up will also be featured in the June issue of the magazine and on International Tax Review.
Methodology
In January and February 2013, firms in 26 European areas and jurisdictions and South Africa were invited to submit three examples, in each category, of their best work from January 1 2012 to December 31 2012 period. The submissions were eligible for consideration for the two awards (tax and transfer pricing) in each of the countries, as well as for the 19 pan-European awards.
In-house tax departments were also invited to fill out short submissions for consideration in the categories open to them.
International Tax Review editorial staff compiled shortlists and chose winners for each award based on the submissions and further research, which included interviews with practitioners and tax executives from companies around Europe. These opinions about who should win were influential but not final.
The awards were judged according to:
Size (not conclusive, though it does indicate what a tax team is capable of taking on)
Innovation (did the solution the adviser employed show something more than the straightforward answer that is commonly used?)
Complexity (did the matter address tax issues that were out of the ordinary? What ingenuity did the adviser show to solve them?)
For details of how to attend the awards ceremony, please contact Andrew Tappin at atappin@euromoneyplc.com or +44 207 779 8661.
