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Barrie Akin, formerly of Gray's Inn Tax Chambers, has joined the tax team at Devereux Chambers. Formerly an accountant, Akin has been in practice at the tax bar since 1996. His work covers the range of direct and indirect taxes.

Brian Birt Brian Birt has joined MHA MacIntyre Hudson in their London office, as a VAT manager. He has more than 15 years' experience in indirect taxes and now manages his new firm's London and South East client portfolio.

Jim Fuller

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Marta Szafarowska All Polish companies using group financing have to prepare for a completely new thin capitalisation rules from January 2015 to avoid significant adverse effects on their tax position. This refers in particular to all those taxpayers who, to avoid such negative effects, use financing granted by their grandparent companies. Basically, existing thin capitalisation rules apply only to loans granted by direct shareholders, provided that such loans exceed the equivalent of three times the value of the company's share capital. Consequently, most of the companies requiring group financing (for example, leasing and CFM companies) have been financed by their grandparent companies. The new provisions envisage not only covering the financing from grandparent companies with thin capitalisation rules, but also the new debt:equity ratio. The thin capitalisation rules will apply if the amount of debt towards related parties exceeds the amount of the company's equity (instead of three times the company's share capital). A very limited netting of debt has also been envisaged – generally, to apply the above rules the loans granted by related parties will be reduced by the loans granted by the taxpayer but only to those related parties. From the perspective of CFM or leasing companies such netting is completely insufficient.

Sean Foley

In diaper need of reform: Tax Relief proposes new penalty system Tax Relief has heard of people not declaring things on their tax return; of course, there have been various initiatives around the world aimed at cracking down on tax evasion. But this story is more about invention than evasion. Joanna Hawkins-Mahaffey, a resident of Peterborough, Ontario in Canada, has been fined more than $142,000 after pleading guilty to five counts of making false or deceptive statements and wilfully claiming false tax credits. On top of the fine, she has been sentenced to 90 days in jail.

"The impact so far is limited, but we keep a close eye as technology is rapidly improving. To remain in control, technology is ultimately required and, at the same time, one can act more pro-actively once technology is in place."

David Spencer, of the Law Offices of David Spencer in New York, analyses the recent work of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and assesses its growing influence in the area of international taxation.

India has announced the adoption of IFRS converged standards for financial reporting and tax accounting standards for the computation of taxable income. Sai Venkateshwaran, partner and head of the accounting advisory services group at KPMG in India analyses the impact and challenges of these announcements.