E&Y appoints head of tax investigations

Ernst & Young has significantly boosted its tax practice by recruiting a senior Inland Revenue compliance officer as national director of tax investigation services.

Bob Brown, former deputy controller of the Revenue’s special compliance office, headed the department’s highly-publicised, five-year investigation into Nissan UK’s CEO Octav Botnar. Earlier this month, Botnar offered to make a u59m corporation tax settlement with the Revenue days before the matter was due to go before the tax commissioners.

Brown’s final role at the Revenue involved overseeing the merger of the Government department’s old enquiry branches and special offices into a single unit.

E&Y has charged Brown with leading the firm’s national network of tax investigation specialists. The network’s main brief will be to respond to the Revenue’s burgeoning efforts in the field of prosecution and the new challenges posed by the imminent introduction of its self-assessment regime.

E&Y’s head of tax, Douglas Fairbairn, said: ‘With the move to self-assessment, the emphasis of Revenue work is moving much more towards investigation and there will be an increasing need for professional advice in this area.’