What General Counsel Should Ask Tax Directors

Tax departments report up through finance rather than the legal function in most companies, so it’s easy for chief legal officers to be disconnected from one of the most legally complex and risky parts of any enterprise. Couple that with the fact that most tax directors are accountants, not lawyers, and you have the all-too-common situation in which the chief legal officer is unaware of tax disputes until it’s too late in the process to deal with it effectively. This can be avoided if counsel knows the right questions to ask and understands where and how to be most helpful to the tax department.