16 17 Finance Monthly. Finance Monthly. Expert Insight Expert Insight Good advisers help clients identify and address those issues early, before buyers start asking uncomfortable questions. You’ve spoken publicly about the misuse of legal pressure. Does that have lessons for dealmakers? Yes — particularly around strategy and judgement. There’s a tendency to assume that legal force automatically gives you control over a situation. “Threatening litigation can be a spectacularly bad move, especially in matters that touch on public interest or governance. Instead of containing an issue, it can amplify it.” Part of modern legal advice is telling clients when not to escalate. Just because something is legally possible doesn’t mean it’s strategically sensible. Does complexity in the tax system itself create deal friction? Absolutely. Decades of anti-avoidance legislation have produced a very dense system that increases compliance costs without necessarily improving outcomes. From a deal perspective, complexity slows transactions, increases advisory spend and creates uncertainty. Simplification would benefit business without materially reducing tax revenue — but it requires political will. How do you see the role of the tax lawyer evolving? Technical expertise will always matter, but judgement matters more. As automation and AI take over routine analysis, the value of advisers lies in assessing risk, anticipating scrutiny and guiding clients through grey areas with confidence. Tax lawyers are increasingly strategic advisers embedded in deal teams from the outset. If you were advising a board entering a major transaction today, what would you tell them to prioritise? Defensibility and clarity. Understand your historic positions, document your reasoning and avoid anything that relies on optimism rather than evidence. Deals are hard enough without carrying unnecessary tax uncertainty into the process. WHAT DAN NEIDLE DOES NOW After leaving Clifford Chance in 2022, Neidle founded Tax Policy Associates, a non-profit organisation that works with a network of tax and legal professionals to investigate tax avoidance, enforcement failures and systemic weaknesses in the UK tax system. Rather than advising individual transactions, his work now focuses on evidence-based analysis for policymakers, journalists and institutions — bringing transparency to areas of tax risk that often only surface once deals are already done. For dealmakers and advisers alike, his career arc reflects a broader shift in the profession: from clever structuring behind closed doors to accountability, defensibility and long-term risk awareness
RkJQdWJsaXNoZXIy Mjk3Mzkz