Finding solutions to meet your tax needs is what makes us tick. By staying at the cutting edge of tax, we can provide you with robust tax corporate governance and ensure you get the best tax outcomes, while also meeting your commercial objectives.

Our tax professionals have a full range of tax specialisations and deep experience in a wide range of industries. And just as your business operates across borders, so do we. The BDO worldwide network gives you access to tax specialists with similarly wide expertise and deep industry knowledge across Australia’s trading partner countries.

Every transaction presents tax opportunities and challenges.

The acquisition, disposition, or restructuring of a business can create significant opportunities, as well as significant tax exposure. Both companies and individuals must confront numerous and complex tax issues, often with only a very small window of time to consider alternatives and implement strategies.

From acquisition structuring and due diligence to post-acquisition integration services, BDO’s dedicated Transaction Advisory Services Tax practice delivers comprehensive, partner-led tax due diligence services to clients of all sizes as part of our Quality of Business approach. With deep experience across industry sectors, and one of the world’s largest accounting and advisory networks, our professionals are uniquely qualified to meet the particular needs of our clients, whatever they may be. Our service model is built upon a transparent, highly collaborative approach, and BDO ensures that organizations have access to the people they need, when they need them.

M&A TAX SERVICES

Acquiring and merging businesses is a key moment in the lifecycle of companies. There is usually a lot at stake. It can be daunting to manage all the aspects of the acquisition. Tax will be a key aspect of any deal or transaction. It can impact every element of the deal from raising finance to the corporate structure to efficient structuring of share and asset sales. You will be better equipped to deal with all these challenges if you have a tax strategy to support your overall business strategy.

Our Mergers & Acquisitions tax team regularly advises clients on:

• Raising finance for acquisitions with a view to maximising tax relief for the borrower and withholding tax on financing costs
• How investors will be taxed on their investment return
• Efficient structuring of share and asset sales, including minimising tax cost on returns to shareholders
• Efficient structuring of all transaction costs including financing, corporate tax, Securities Transfer Taxes and VAT
• Tax due diligence
• Commercial advice on investment decisions and tax implications
• Integrated Mergers & Acquisitions advisory

Our team work closely with corporate finance specialists to provide an integrated advisory team before and during the transaction process. We will also work with and leverage colleagues across the world in the BDO international network to advise on international and cross-border transactions.

TAX DUE DILIGENCE – ACQUISITION AND VENDOR DUE DILIGENCE

Due diligence serves to reassure potential buyers or future business partners that their investments and relationships are financially sound and profitable, and there are low levels of associated risk across the entire organisation. Our team have a thorough understanding of both the acquisition and vendor due diligence process, and the information required to determine the organisations overall health. The scope of our work is tailored and agreed to suit the specific circumstances and requirements of a client and/or transaction.

We understand ambitious and entrepreneurial management teams as well as the needs of the large corporates, city institutions, private equity and other investors. This makes us the ideal choice to bridge those different worlds and manage the differences in culture and business practice that inevitably arise on transactions.

Whether you are engaged in a private equity and a capital market transaction, you will work with a specialist team that understands your commercial needs. The reports you receive will be issues-led and include the expert opinion and analysis of the leading partner on your engagement. We go beyond one-size fits to bring you a flexible report designed to meet your specific requirements.

While we are a standalone team providing focused on tax due diligence, we work very closely with our colleagues in the Transactions Services and Capital Markets teams. We also provide bid-support work and advise on the tax aspects of reporting accountant work.

Our approach is flexible and will be tailored to your needs. You can commission high level diligence and red-flag reporting or a comprehensive exercise or anything in between. We will also tailor our approach to take account of less material jurisdictions or discrete areas such as those relevant to a specific sector or private equity backing.

Our Tax Due Diligence and Structuring services include:

• Pre-acquisition planning including sell side carve-out restructuring
• Post-acquisition integration/optimization services
• Tax due diligence, both buy-side and sell-side – Full Scope, Resticted Scope and Red Flag Reports
• Tax leakage M&A
• Tax modeling and tax benefit analyses
• Tax planning for bankruptcies and restructurings
• Tax structuring of mergers and acquisitions, dispositions and carve-outs

TAX DUE DILIGENCE – RESOURCES AND REACH

In order to deliver the right advice for you, we liaise closely with the relevant sector specialists across BDO South Africa. You can also rely on us to support you wherever you need to do business by drawing on the reach of the international BDO network with 1,500 offices in more than 160 countries. You benefit from local knowledge and support , drawing on BDO's extensive network and local knowledge across 154 countries worldwide to provide a comprehensive tax due diligence offering, whatever the business and wherever it is located.

Additional tax transaction services

We also provide assistance with associated tax matters including:

• Tax structuring
• Reasonableness of the tax assumptions in any forecast models and/or locked box calculations
• Input into the tax indemnity