About us
Welcome to World Tax 2012, International Tax Review's directory to the leading tax advisory firms around the world.
This is a guide for tax executives to help them determine who is the firm they want to advise them in a particular jurisdiction. They may need to choose an adviser because, for example, it is a country or territory where their company has not done business before, where they cannot use their usual firm because of a conflict of interest or because they are unhappy with their retained firm and want a change.
It is not an easy annual task to pin down who the leading firms are for tax advice around the world. However, it is a worthwhile one if it means companies find advisers they can trust to help them achieve their tax objectives.
This publication is all about quality. It is a combination of merit of work, and the size, breadth and depth of practice.
If it was just about size, the same firms would come out on top every year. Not unreasonably, they argue that size must mean something, that they only employ the lawyers or advisers they have work for. But what about the smaller firms with fewer practitioners but more specific experience? It is surely right that their capabilities are not lost in the size debate.
If this guide was just about depth and breadth of practice, then the firms who have a number of advisers in each practice area, such as corporate tax, indirect tax and transfer pricing should always come out on top, shouldn't they? But those practices may have stayed the same numerically for a number of years and while doing solid work, only retain clients out of loyalty. They may not have equipped themselves to deal with key tax developments.
It means quality of work – where it is not obvious what the market is telling us about who the best firms are, where it is not clear who the outstanding organisations are – the decisions about which firms should go in which tiers are made according to the ingenuity and innovation that lawyers and advisers bring to client engagements. And that quality is clear-cut not because the value of a transaction may be $500 million or $1 billion. It could come through just as well in a matter of $50 million.
The criteria, which you can see elsewhere in this introduction, that cover size, breadth and depth and practice, and specialisms, are important, but are not the crucial factors. Quality of work has to be.
Any other way is just not helpful to tax executives.
It is in this context that International Tax Review presents World Tax 2012, its comprehensive guide to the world's leading tax firms. We hope it will help tax executives obtain the best advice for their situation.
| Tier criteria |
Tier 1
International network and leading reputation in their own jurisdiction; a number of specialists in all the areas of tax: planning, transactional, transfer pricing, indirect taxes and litigation, reflected in the size and quality of transactions
Tier 2
International network and leading reputation in their own jurisdiction; at least one partner in all the areas of tax: planning, transactional, transfer pricing, indirect taxes and litigation
Tier 3
May not be part of an international network but a leading reputation in their own jurisdiction; at least one partner in two distinct areas of tax
Tier 4
Niche firm; strong reputation in one area of tax, for example, transfer pricing, indirect taxes or litigation/controversy
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Methodology
International Tax Review researchers and journalists interviewed corporate tax directors and advisers by phone, e-mail and face-to-face to compile the tiers of leading firms and write the commentaries for 56 jurisdictions in World Tax 2012.
Each firm that was listed in last year's edition was given the opportunity to make a submission, along with the leading firms in the jurisdictions World Tax 2012 was researching for the first time. Other firms mentioned during the research were also sent a research questionnaire. The return of a questionnaire or a research interview did not guarantee any firm a position in the tiers.
The corporate interviewees were chosen from a representative sample of clients of the leading firms in the market. One of the questions we asked was: "Who is your primary adviser?" We clearly could not know this in advance so the representative sample could only be constructed after the interviews were completed.
Interviews with tax directors were much more extensive this year than ever before. On an anonymous basis, we asked them questions about, for example, the quality of advice received, the amount of money they spend on tax advice, how often they meet their advisers and how their service providers could improve. We have collected far more information than we could include in World Tax and we hope to make this available this to tax advisers later in the year.
The objective of interviewing both practitioners and tax executives was to get an opinion of tax advisers from their peers and their clients.
Tax directors have their own view of the market, based on the advisers they use, while practitioners have a broader view of practice because they advise many more clients than the number of external advisers a tax director uses.
At the same time, there was a possibility of bias and ulterior motive in what anyone contributed to the research and we tried to minimise this as much as possible through a verification process.
No recommendation from any adviser for their own firm or their colleagues in that firm was taken into account. Firms could not pay to be included in the tiers or to have their individuals listed but were offered independently the opportunity to list their professional details for a fee.
Tiers of leading firms from 56 countries or territories have been included.
Unique rankings
This year, once again, leading individuals are highlighted in the text about their firm in the market commentaries on each country and territory, rather than being listed separately by specialism.
At the top end of the rankings are the firms that have the greatest depth of resources, experience, and range of specialisms. They are considered the best teams overall for tax advice in the country concerned. In cases where our research revealed it is difficult to distinguish between the quality of teams, such firms are grouped, in alphabetical order, in the same tier. The criteria for the rest of the tiers is also published here.
As much as we would like it to be, this cannot be an entirely objective exercise. The ultimate criterion has to be quality of work so that is likely to be the reason why one firm, though modest in numbers, may be in a tier that, on the face of it, appears to be beyond it.
The important point to note about the rankings is that all the firms listed have highly reputable tax individuals in their advisory teams.
We hope you find World Tax 2012 to be a valuable tool in helping you identify the appropriate advisers in the jurisdictions covered.
Ralph Cunningham
Managing editor, International Tax Review