Group Tax Manager: Africa at Aspen Pharma Group

JOB PROFILE

To provide support to the Group Tax Executive by controlling the tax affairs, including providing advice, of individual companies in the assign region ensuring that the Group meets its tax obligations.

KEY PERFORMANCE AREAS

Accounting for taxes and related party transactions:

• Ensures that corporate tax liabilities for the region are accurately recorded, within the deadlines reflected in the Group Finance timetable, by actively managing respective team members to achieve these deadlines.
• Ensures that the TRCS submissions for the region are made on time, as reflected in the Group Finance timetable and is reviewed by the Tax Specialist within forty-eight hours of the submission deadline with feedback in this regard being sent to management.
• Reviews all manual adjustments made by the Tax Specialist and understand why this has taken place and recommend changes to any tax rules to the Tax Technology Specialist (“TTS”), if these adjustments will be made on a permanent basis.
• Ensure a note is prepared for each significant manual adjustment and that these notes are approved by the Group Tax Executive (“GTE”) within forty-eight hours of the note being prepared and before the Group’s effective tax rate (“ETR”) has to be finalized, as reflected in the Group Finance timetable.
• Ensures that all changes in accounting standards are fully considered from a tax perspective, for the region, and make recommendations to the TTS of additional rules that must be created.
• Assesses tax positions taken by the region and provide input into the Group’s IFRIC23 register.
• Oversees the accurate disclosure of corporate tax liabilities and related parties notes in the company’s in the regions annual financial statements. In addition, ensure that there is no ambiguity relating to transactions that have been entered into, which could give rise to queries by the tax authorities. The work should be performed in accordance with the Group Finance timetable that is prepared in relation to annual financial statements that are issued by that team.
• Works with the auditors that are appointed to conclude the annual external audit for companies in the region, to ensure that a report is issued by 23 July (or the nearest Friday to this date) confirming that no tax issues are noted from their review of the tax calculation.
• Ensures that the segmented income statement is received from every company in the region, on a monthly basis, is reviewed by the Tax Specialist in the team and uploaded to TRCS within forty-eight hours of the date stipulated in the Group Finance timetable. In addition, work with the Tax Specialist to early identify issues where the Transfer Pricing Policy is not being met.
• Reviews the recharge calculations that are performed by the Tax Specialist.
• Tax compliance and audits:
• Ensures each company in the region meets all of their tax reporting obligations by actively managing respective team members to achieve these deadlines – no return should be submitted without it being prepared by the Tax Specialist or the company’s advisors and reviewed. This responsibility covers corporate tax, value-added tax and transfer pricing returns.
• Risk assess positions taken in the tax returns that are being submitted and ensure that those risks are fully understood and if significant, brought immediately to the GTE’s attention so that a decision can be made as to whether or not the proposed position should be taken in the returns.
• Ensures that the right amount of tax is paid by the companies in the region to limit the Group’s exposure to tax refunds and actively manage the recovery of any amount that is due to the Group by any tax authority.
• Ensures that the Tax Specialists are preparing the VAT returns for your region and that these are reviewed.
• Ensures that all local files are prepared for companies in the region, prior to the submission of the corporate tax return, by managing respective team member’s workloads to ensure this requirement is met. In addition, the local file must be reviewed and the CFO of the company prior to the submission of the corporate tax return.
• Ensures that respective team member prepares the controlled foreign company tax return for each company in the region.
• Ensures that every response to any Tax Authority is reviewed and risk assessed prior to the response being submitted to the Tax Authority. Actively manage all audits that relate to transfer pricing or international tax, with the support of your Tax Specialist and our appointed advisors (where necessary).
• Prepares advance ruling applications that are either identified by yourself or the GTE and secure those rulings from the Tax Authority.
• Transfer pricing:
• Review and sign off on the credit rating, appropriate margin and memorandum that is prepared by the TS, before it is released to the business unit.
• Work with Group Legal to ensure legal agreements that are required to be entered into to support new transactions are issued in template form and that the agreement is issued in relation to the company that you are responsible for.
• Undertake a comparable uncontrolled price (“CUP”) assessment for companies the region that you are responsible for, using the standard templates. Maintain this on an annual basis and ensure that if any CUP is assessed that this fact is brought to the team’s attention so that the statements made in our local files and the reliance on the transactional net margin method are adjusted and benchmark studies are no longer secured.
• Work with your fellow RTM’s to ensure that transactions are appropriately and consistently described in each of the local files that are being prepared for the Group.
• Bring all changes to the GTE’s attention so that the transfer pricing policy and all related policies can be updated.
• Work with the Tax Administrator to keep the local file and master file database up to date.
• Legislation:
• Monitors changes in tax law – assess how these could impact on the company’s in the region and share this information with the business unit.
• Implements value-adding initiatives arising from changes in tax law.
• Manages, in accordance with the training timetable, monthly training relating to developments in international tax, corporate tax and VAT.
• Corporate activities affecting your region:
• Reviews all legal agreements that are entered into by companies in the region to ensure tax provisions are appropriately included, that the right party is entering into the agreement and that the structure of the agreements optimizes the taxes arising under the agreement.
• Reviews all board resolutions entered into by companies in the region to ensure they meet tax reporting requirements and do not give rise to tax risk.

Opinions:

• Reviews all opinions that are issued by the Tax Specialist and ensure that these opinions are either second reviewed by the GTE or our appointed advisors prior to those being released to the business.
• Prepares opinions, that are either identified as being necessary, as requested by the business which are highly technical opinions or as requested by the GTE and ensure that these opinions are reviewed by the GTE and, if the GTE deems it necessary, by our appointed advisors before they are released to the business.
• Once released to the business, facilitate a meeting with the person that the opinion has been issued to so that the person fully understands the opinion that has been issued.

Stakeholder engagement:

• Embeds a culture of collaboration across functions and business units within your region.
• Day-to-day management of the relationship with the company’s appointed tax advisors including management of the budgets associated with their activities.
• Tax policy and tax risk management
• Ensures that every company in the region is applying the tax policies that are issued by Group Tax and that your Tax Specialists are implementing the standard operating procedures.

Staff Management:

• Implement a process to have regular cadence sessions with each team member during which work allocation and performance against KPIs are discussed
• Actively coaching and mentoring direct reports and the broader staff, providing feedback and developing and growing employees to develop their technical and soft skills
• Work with the TS and GTE to undertake performance reviews of the TS and identify areas of growth and development for inclusion in each individuals KPI

JOB REQUIREMENTS

EDUCATIONAL QUALIFICATIONS & EXPERIENCE:

• B.Com Hons (Taxation) or B.Com plus a Higher Diploma in Tax
• Masters in International Tax or similar qualification an advantage
• CA (SA an advantage)
• +10yrs experience in an international tax consulting role, or in the commercial environment

WORK-SPECIFIC SKILLS & EXPOSURE:

• Ability to lead a team of skilled tax specialists

SKILLS AND ATTRIBUTES:

• Independent worker
• Self-motivated and highly productive
• High levels of accuracy and strong analytical skills
• Highly dependable and dedicated to the work under their management
• Strong levels of co-operation
• High levels of business acumen
• Project management skills including effective management of projects, the ability to meet all deadlines and the ability to effectively manage the implementation of proposals/acquisitions
• Good opinion writing skills
• Ability to understand and interpret the impact of tax law changes on the business