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The nights are drawing in again and that can only mean one thing: it is time to start thinking about the Taxation Awards 2020. For those of us who have been involved since the beginning it is scarcely credible that this will be the 20th running of the awards. They have grown in popularity over those years and can now truly be said to be the highlight of the tax year. Don’t just take my word for it – talk to colleagues who have been to previous events and they will confirm just what a great evening it is. Who said tax advisers can’t do fun!
We have just launched the website for this year, which contains all of the information you need to know to enter. Although you can enter straightaway, our experience is that most people leave it until close to the deadline before they submit their nomination forms. But we launch this early to give people time to think about whether to enter and, in particular, to start to put together an outline of the sorts of things they want to include in their submission. It is often easy for the judges to spot the entries that have been cobbled together at the last minute (yes, that does happen…) and they are rarely as effective as those that have been thought about carefully over a period of time.
The categories for 2020
The categories this year are broadly the same as in previous years and full details are available on the website. There are a couple of changes which you may be interested in. First, there has been some confusion in the past about the ‘independent tax consultancy firm’ award and whether specialist consulting teams within larger firms can enter. So this year we have two awards: the first is for genuinely independent consultancy firms – the second is for distinct specialist teams within larger firms. We hope this will open up the awards to more firms than ever before. Second, we have an entirely new award – for the best employer in tax. This will be open to all firms of whatever size who can demonstrate that they really stand out as employers. More details of the nomination process for this award will be announced shortly, including information on how the views of employees themselves must be part of the entry. This is an experiment, because we haven’t had an award before that is not directly concerned with tax itself, but we think that it will be an innovation many firms will welcome.
Last year for the first time we introduced a new award – the Tolley award for outstanding achievement in tax over the past year. Nominations were sought from members of the profession and once the shortlist had been announced voting for the winner was also opened up to tax practitioners. We had been slightly apprehensive that this might not work but we need not have worried. Nominations and voting exceeded our most optimistic expectations and it will come as no surprise to hear that we will be repeating this approach again this year.
Next steps
So do look at the site and start the discussion within your firm about putting in an entry. The awards are great fun (if you are in any doubt look at the video highlights from last year on the website) but they do have a serious purpose. The tax profession does not always get a good press and these awards are a way of sharing our common pride in what we do. As last year’s winner of the lifetime achievement award, Stephen Banyard said: ‘The awards encourage a better tax profession; they make us better at what we do.’
See Taxation Awards website: tinyurl.com/TaxA2020
