Introduction to Anita Eunson, Director at A&M Taxand

We were delighted to welcome Anita Eunson to the A&M Taxand UK team in January 2021.

Anita joins us as a Director based in our Glasgow office. She has more than 20 years’ experience in equity-based reward and incentives.  

Anita has worked with clients across various industries, including the financial services and oil and gas sectors, as well as working with a wide range of private-equity backed or owner-managed businesses, advising on equity-based incentive arrangements from design through to drafting and implementation.  

Prior to joining A&M, Anita spent 4 years with the Employer Solutions team at Grant Thornton UK LLP in Edinburgh, where she most recently served as a Director. In that role, she led the domestic employment taxes offering in Scotland, as well as supporting the firm’s North of England region on equity reward projects. Projects undertaken while in this role included implementation of UK tax-advantaged arrangements such as Enterprise Management Incentive schemes and Save As You Earn plans for NASDAQ quoted companies. Anita also advised on the impact of the employment related securities legislation on many transactions, both from a due diligence perspective and as part of transaction structuring.

Contact Anita at aeunson@alvarezandmarsal.com.

A&M Scotland Asset Manager Breakfast Briefing on 10th March 2021

Our next Scotland Asset Manager Breakfast Briefing is due to take place virtually on Wednesday 10th March between 9am and 10am.

Our March Breakfast Briefing will cover:

• A market update provided by Daniel Parry, Managing Director, Head of A&M Funds Tax;
• Cover a review of both the Scottish and UK Budgets provided by Charlotte Walker, Manager, and Adam Stevenson, Associate;
• Provide an update on Making Tax Digital for Income Tax provided by Jordan Brown, Senior Director;
• Highlight current trends in management incentives and hot topics in employment taxes provided by Anita Eunson, Director; plus
• A guest fund administration presentation from Associate Director, Sukhjit Dhaliwal, from NCM Fund Services.

Please find further details on the event including a link to registration here. 

We hope to virtually “see” you there!

A&M’s IR35 – Are You Ready? Webinar on 9th March 2021

Our Reward and Employment Tax team are also hosting a Webinar on Tuesday 9th March on the off-payroll working rules (“IR35”) which are due to come into effect from 6 April 2021.

The Webinar will include a one hour presentation between 10.30am – 11.30am which will provide an insight into practical steps you can take between now and 6 April 2021, followed by a 30 minute Q&A session.

The Webinar will be led by Louise Jenkins, Tracey Norton and Linda Cameron who have extensive experience helping companies prepare for the upcoming IR35 changes and will share market practice, hints and tips as the deadline approaches.

Please find a link to register for the Webinar here.

An introduction to A&M’s new Test Employment Status Tool for off-payroll working

In light of the IR35 rules coming into effect from 6 April 2021, A&M has developed a suite of tools, called the Test Employment Status Tools (“TEST”), that may be helpful in determining whether you have an IR35 issue.

This may impact you if you directly engage with individuals, via their Personal Service Company (“PSC”) and / or your fund’s investee companies. 

How can TEST help?

Our Reward and Employment Tax team has assisted many clients on IR35. Whether you started work on this last year and need to dust off where you left off, or if you have been waiting for confirmation that the rules are coming in, we can help. Using our TEST tools, both in the run up to 6 April and into your Business As Usual environment, we can support you to achieve this in a cost and time-efficient way. TEST is scalable to your needs and can include:

• Project plans across workstreams;
• Project management support;
• Evaluation of population;
• Provide automated status outcomes, like CEST, but with better data capture, slicker processes, manage data requirements, plus communications via a personalised mailbox;
• Policy, Process and Procedure changes, including Payroll options; and
• Contract and Terms & Conditions revisions to help bypass IR35 and/or strengthen agreements and status documentation (including status determination statements).

There is potentially a lot to be done in a short space of time, depending on the size of your contractor population.  We don’t advocate a “big bang” approach given the current climate, however, once the initial determinations have been made, we would continue to support you, to build out the overall end to end pre onboarding to termination processes. Helping to de-clutter where we can.

For more information on the TEST tool, please see our latest article here.

Alternatively, please contact Louise Jenkins at louise.jenkins@alvarezandmarsal.com or Tracey Norton at tracey.norton@alvarezandmarsal.com.