One minute with... Oliver Currall

What’s keeping you busy at work?

I recently joined Fried Frank, and am keeping out of trouble on my first M&A deal and fund mandates under my new flag. I am also getting to know new colleagues, catching up with clients, over-using favourite acronyms such as QAHC, DIMF and BEPS, and failing heroically at common admin tasks.

What do you know now that you wish you’d known at the start of your career?

In the expansive universe of tax, it takes time to locate enough stars to navigate by. The pitch-black of the Yellow and Orange tax handbooks is only temporary. Soon, you will encounter a planet or galaxy which is familiar – this is a big moment, and these moments will become more frequent. Eventually, you will accept never knowing it all and admit that the whole point was to keep learning every day.

If you could make one change to a tax law or practice, what would it be?

The disguised remuneration rules were introduced with a noble purpose. The legislation is, however, difficult to live with in practice, even where the rules really should not apply. The key ‘reasonable to suppose’ test is not common or well understood in the tax world, and advisers do not like to rely on it which leaves them having to work through reams of exceptions to find those which accommodate their transaction (and even those may not be a perfect fit). It adds up to a lot of complex work, mostly where no harm was ever intended. It is also far too easy for the casual observer to stall a transaction with a quick round of ‘but have you thought about Part 7A’. Some more targeted rules or broader exceptions would be very welcome.

Has a recent tax case caught your eye?

The Court of Appeal decision in the BlueCrest case (regarding the tax treatment of individual members of UK LLPs) didn’t so much catch my eye as poke me hard in both of them. The decision reversed the lower-tier extension of ‘significant influence’ (one of the key gateways to partner status) to include informal ‘financial influence’ – that interim position had been comforting to some taxpayers, but was not the basis on which most historic advice had proceeded. More concerning was how far the Court of Appeal retrenched the status quo: the law now requires significant influence to be established exclusively by looking to the legally enforceable rights and duties of LLP members. In practice, the documents may well reflect a number of rights afforded to individual LLP members, but establishing that all of those rights are in fact enforceable by the individuals will require a more forensic analysis of how exactly the individuals’ rights and duties actually work within the LLP’s governance structure. The hope is that the Supreme Court may hear the taxpayer’s requested appeal, to bring a more practicable resolution to this long-running saga.

What are you looking out for later this year?

Many of us are waiting for some update on the proposed changes to the UK tax treatment of carried interest, following the HM Treasury consultation which closed in January. A number of respondents submitted detailed feedback on the policy intentions and design of the new regime, in particular around ensuring that any new qualifying conditions for the beneficial carried interest tax regime did not bring even more complexity to this area by cutting across the already fiddly rules for income-based carried interest (in particular). I am also hoping – perhaps in vain – that the feedback sent to HM Treasury around double tax issues (especially for US taxpayers) will be taken into account and possibly even worked back to improve the known problems with the existing ‘disguised income management fee’ regime in this regard.

You might not know this about me but...

My most high-stakes appointment falls on a Monday evening, when my guitar tutor divines within two bars how much or little practice the last week has seen. I am currently laying waste to Sweet Home Chicago, with apologies to my family who have to suffer through the work in progress.