Finance Monthly - October 2021

19 Finance Monthly. Bank i ng & F i nanc i a l Se r v i ce s At the onset of the pandemic, my team and I quickly realised that clients needed reliable and swift communication. We were agile and developed many new business offerings that enabled clients to survive and rebuild. Some achievements include: • We established a bi-weekly “Tax in a Time of COVID” external webcast series to advance awareness of new tax proposals. This garnered over 120K participants YTD. This webcast series not only allowed us to assist our clients in understanding complicated global policies further, but it enabled us to use an alternative medium to communicate to the public about the complexities behind new and proposed tax policies. • We developed the Washington Council’s “What to expect in Washington” Alerts, which provide clients with daily recaps on Capitol Hill happenings. • We participated in two CNBC Business Interrupted Series to help explain how the government stimulus response to COVID-19 was tied to tax policy. This CNBC series won gold at the ANA B2 Awards. • We enhanced the EY Global Tax Platform, an innovative end- to-end platform that supports all tax business solutions. The Global Tax Platform has won five Stevie awards. • We leveraged strategic forecasting, modelling and scenario planning from the EY Quantitative Economics and Statistics group, which became an essential tool for clients mid- pandemic. These tools provided clients with a high-level view of their vulnerabilities to the various tax increases proposed. For our clients, we understood that given the unpredictable nature of the business and social discourse, we needed to provide them with a platform to work through various scenarios and conclude their best next plan of action with as much information as possible. In all, we learned that the right combination of communication and analytical tools can arm companies with the peace of mind needed to regrow or pivot their business models amid uncertainty. Tell us a little bit about EY’s belief that tax will play a key role in building a more sustainable working world. Reflecting on the growing number of climate events over the past 12 months, I am encouraged to identify all the ways in which tax intersects with sustainability and how it can help incentivise corporations to reduce their footprint in meaningful ways. I believe Environmental, Social and Corporate Governance (ESG) reporting and tax strategy will play a growing and pivotal role in sustainability efforts, as more governments and investors ask companies to disclose their strategies for responding to climate change. Increasingly corporate tax departments are being asked to develop tax governance strategies that take into account risk management and ESG considerations—a fast- growing trend. In the US, sustainability has become an increasing part of the national conversation under US President Joe Biden, with the administration seeking to achieve net-zero carbon emissions by 2050. In addition to rejoining the Paris Climate Agreement, President Biden has worked to restore critical environmental protections and pledged to promote job creation in a clean energy economy, with a goal to eliminate carbon pollution from “I believe Environmental, Social and Corporate Governance (ESG) reporting and tax strategy will play a growing and pivotal role in sustainability efforts, as more governments and investors ask companies to disclose their strategies for responding to climate change.”