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Key points
- This year’s Taxation Awards take place on 16 May at the Hilton London Metropole.
- Two new categories are available for 2024 – best employment tax team and tax chambers of the year.
- Guidance on how to enter is on the Taxation Awards website.
- The deadline for entries is 23 February.
It is that time of year again – and I don’t mean the tax return deadline. I’m of course referring to Tolley’s Taxation Awards, which are taking place on 16 May in our brand-new location, the Hilton London Metropole. This is a bigger venue than we have had before: such is the demand for places at the awards that we wanted to move to somewhere which gave everybody plenty of room to mingle and to meet friends and colleagues.
Check out the awards website
The awards site is open – see tinyurl.com/taxawards2024 – and, judging by the number of firms who have already registered an interest, I am confident that we will have a bumper crop of entries again this year.
Broadly speaking, the categories are the same as last year but we have introduced two new ones this time. The first is for best employment tax team. It is a while since we last had this category, but we are confident that there will be a lot of interest here given the very wide range of work that is done by employment tax specialists. The second is tax chambers of the year. Over the years we have taken a number of different approaches to recognising the work of tax lawyers and, to be frank, have not always had the level of engagement which we had hoped for. But in relaunching this category this year we believe that we will attract a good crop of entries.
Winning traits
I’m often asked, ‘what are the judges looking for in a winning entry?’. There is no single right answer to this but I would suggest that there are two key elements.
The first is that the entry must be something that the judges enjoy reading. That might go without saying but every year we do get some entries which, with the best will in the world, are so turgid that it is a challenge to get past page one. That doesn’t mean that you have to go all out for excitement or dumb down the content, but remember that the judges are only human and are more likely to be positive about something which they found a pleasure to read.
Secondly, do try to get some balance in your entries. We like to get an all-round view of your practice. At one extreme we get entries which are no more than a list of achievements with nothing about the team – at the other end we get some which are full of information about what the team does in its spare time, with lots of pictures of team building events, which can lead us to wonder whether anybody does any work! I exaggerate of course (though not much…) and the important thing is to ensure that your entry does give us a good picture of the practice as a whole.
We have a much more detailed guidance about what makes a good entry on the awards pages – see tinyurl.com/taxawardshowtoenter. I strongly recommend that you read this before you get too far along the path of preparing your submission. Note in particular the 3,000 word limit. To be honest I’ve never counted the exact number of words in any entry so don’t be obsessive about this, but at the same it is a very useful guide. In my experience it is perfectly possible to say all you need to say in an entry of less that 3,000 words so don’t be tempted to add padding just to get to the limit – it is always pretty easy to spot when that has happened.
Now is the time
So if you are already in the process of entering do please make sure that you give yourself the best chance of success by following our guidance. And if you haven’t yet thought about entering you need to start thinking about it now. The closing date is 23 February so you still have time, but don’t leave it to the last minute. Build a bit of time for reflection into your timetable so that your entry really does your firm justice.
