Tax & RegulatoryTax & Regulatory

Build in-house when filings are routine and the team is at scale.

Bring in external advisory when there's a structural decision in play — a cross-border transaction, a transfer-pricing assessment, an investment manager structure, a notice that's gone beyond the routine. Also bring us in when an internal team is overloaded during assessment season. We don't replace your finance team; we sit alongside it for the work that needs partner-grade attention.

Before the cross-border element exists, not after.

Structuring a cross-border investment or transaction after the cash has moved is twice the work and often locks in a worse outcome. The decision points to engage us are: planning an outbound investment, setting up an overseas subsidiary, planning a cross-border M&A, raising from a non-resident investor, or considering a holding-company restructure. Six to eight weeks of structuring before action saves quarters of unwinding.

Tax assessment representation is billed as a fixed engagement fee, scoped after the notice and assessment year are reviewed.

Appellate work (CIT(A), ITAT, High Court) is scoped per appeal with milestones tied to the stage. Counsel fees at higher forums are separately billed at counsel rates. We give a full fee estimate before engagement letter, including the probable counsel-fee range for higher forums.

Three to six months from notice to assessment order for a routine scrutiny assessment.

Complex assessments — transfer pricing, related-party transactions, large additions — can stretch to nine months. We commit to a hearing calendar with the assessing officer at the first hearing; once the calendar is set, the timeline becomes predictable.

Mutual NDA at engagement letter stage.

Workpapers and source documents sit on access-controlled servers — segregated per client, accessible only to the named engagement team. We do not share materials across engagements, and we never use one client's data to inform views given to another. Standard professional confidentiality is enforced through ICAI's code and our internal policies.

Partner-led delivery rather than associate-heavy.

Big-4 tax practices are excellent — and necessary when the matter touches multiple jurisdictions at scale. For India-domestic work, mid-market international tax, transfer pricing for INR 50–2,000 crore companies, and routine assessment / appellate work, a partner-led smaller practice gets you direct partner attention at a fraction of the cost.

Yes. Most of our engagements are with companies that have a tax controller or a finance lead handling routine compliance. We layer on for the partner-grade decisions — structuring, assessment defence, opinions, audits. Your team retains ownership of day-to-day filings; we own the matters that need a partner signature.

We represent up to ITAT directly.

For High Court and Supreme Court matters we brief and work alongside senior tax counsel — we have a panel of three counsel we work with regularly. The engagement letter notes counsel-fee ranges so there are no surprises if the matter escalates.

We document the position taken, file it in the assessment defence pack, and update the position memo so future assessments don't re-litigate the same issue.

If the closure was conditional on changes to the company's position going forward, we walk through those with the finance team so they get baked into next year's filings.

Yes, and we usually recommend it.

Most issues that matter to a CFO have both direct-tax and indirect-tax dimensions — transfer pricing of services, treatment of inter-company transactions, M&A structuring, ESOP grants to non-residents. Splitting them across firms loses the cross-view. The same partner team covers both.