When the Algorithm Asks the Questions - Eoin Fitzgerald

the doc above the surface of the water it saw a cam and then below the surface is paddling like mad. And I think that's what most tax teams look like. It's that cam is the other, you know, the other, the other functions see, but the under the surface paddling and kind of craziness is in reality. What's what's actually happening? Welcome back everyone to Bizarre Brews. I'm Adam here and today we have a race, actually get all the way from Dubai. Oh, and how are you doing today? I'm very glad Adam. Nice to meet you. Thanks for having me. Yeah, thanks. Thank you. Thank you. How's the weather there right now? It's like in the middle of summer, Dubai must be like really, really hot right now. I used to remember going there as a child. Yeah, it is, it's just beginning to get a bit hotter. Obviously next month you're lying now. This tends to be the hottest too, but you get used to, you know, you don't necessarily go in the middle of the day. But mornings and evenings are lovely and the ASE is really good. So, I know my family back in Ireland right now have been through a heat spell. They're not really far and is made for it necessarily. How is the World Cup fever in Dubai compared to Ireland right now? Yeah, because of so many nationalities here, everybody's interested in some game, you know, so this chat everywhere opposed. Last night's game was Morocco, Netherlands this morning, you know, there's lots of, there's lots of interest in, you know, in that game from, from lots of aspects, actually. But yeah, there is no, the time zone here means that some of the games were on either, you know, 12, 2 in the morning, 5 in the morning. So, it's not particularly kind of good for watching, but the certainly following us. I'm still assuming, like, all the places are still filled with people there in the night because it cools down and people want to get out. Yeah, yeah. Perfect. All right, so thank you so much for coming on here. One of the first questions we always start with, like, I guess it's like, what makes you want to go into tax particularly because there's something like you grew up wanting to do. Did you pick it up in college? Was there a defining aspect in your life that made you want to go in that career? Because your college education was a little bit different and then how did you end up in tax? Yeah, it's a great question. Actually, so my undergrad was public administration and actually, I would say politics and my major was business, right? So, they were the kind of pieces I was interested in. I didn't know even in graduating what I wanted to do, but certainly that was the one about nine judges. No, I spent a year after college kind of figuring things out and talking to, you know, to professionals just trying to see, you know, where do they want to go? And the tax exams appealed to me, actually. I started doing the tax exams in Ireland as a three-year program and I decided I'd start the first session and see if I liked it. And I did, actually, I really liked it. Like the, and it kind of folded into the public administration, the sense of, look, it's, it's public policy. It's a way of raising work for the government. And so, and it's interacting with business. So, those, the undergrad actually in tax exams were quite related, although the complexity in tax is a whole different word. But, you know, I enjoy that first set and I know the, I got some advice in around, you know, because I didn't necessarily want to accounting as to, you know, how do you go and become qualified and where do you get an internship? And I got that in, in video on Tobin. And actually, the internships for pure tax at that time were quite unusual. Generally speaking, you had people going into accounting and then after they qualified in accounting, going into tax, but, you know, finding one that was just purely tax was quite unusual. And I know that when I went for the interview, I'm not sure there was too many others, actually, under the indirect tax rate. And I think they were equally surprised to find somebody like me who was already halfway through the first set of tax exams on my own outside of the consulting environment. So, it started myself. So then, okay, so just for like our US listener, how does the exam sessions in Ireland compared to those CPA exams here? We have the four part exam and you can take them just over a year if you want. And less than a year, you can finish it off. But over here, is it like one exam per year and you only have one shot to take it? It's, it's 12 exams. At least it was in 12 exams over three years. Unless you've exemptions, no, you'd know exemptions. So it did the first year with three exams. Yeah. And so you do it over three, you do it over three years typically. Now, if you've done your ACCA or something, you'll look at exempt from maybe five or four or maybe five or six years. And so you'll end up, you don't do it over five to five long two years. But it's tough. I mean, it's, I don't, there wasn't a single exam in my university days that was harder than any one of those 12. So then why picked indirect tax instead of direct tax? Was there a particular poll for you or a bit more like public policy background coming in? Yeah, not really. Actually, so one of the, well, I said you've got advice after leaving college. One of the one of the, the guys who went to spoke with us, it was a brand new zone practice. He'd about maybe 40 people have got CPA ideas. He'd have a little good practice, you know, advising farmers and local businesses. And I talked to him, I talked to him, I started to hit to tax exams and I said, it was a virtual initiative. And he said, well, actually, look, if one comes up in VAT, well, he said, consider it. Because he said, even though I said, I do the accounting and I do the tax and the books for, you know, all my clients, he said, I'd never do VAT. I said, I simply don't want to go and get advice. So after the VAT issue, you know, speaking, it's, you know, it's a property or it's a sale of business or something, I go and get advice separate to the tax, which I actually do myself. And so there was a VAT trainee came up with BDO and Dublin. And honestly, I wouldn't have known what it was other than I'd been kind of steered in that direction at that point in time. And as I said, when I applied first, I'm not sure how many actually applied at the time, but yeah, I think there was a surprise to find me as always, to find them. Yeah. And then at that time, also, violence, like particularly interesting from international tax perspective too, because most of the US foreign corporations had their IP like situated one way or another in Ireland because of like the structuring before TCGA passed. Were you, was there any particular pull over there as well in the market? Was that a big thing for like some of the foreign oil for some of the, of like accounting firms working over there as well? Yeah, it was super interesting for us actually. So in BDO, we had Google as a client before it even had an Irish entity, 2003 or four. And it was I think a half a floor in one building and they've got, you know, whatever the size of this today, but yeah, they were inclined for four years during their growth phase across Europe. Really interesting to see kind of the heating issues in a company that we might never see to kind of grow challenges again. And that kind of speed of which it grew and the number of offices had to open, you know, products flowing in different directions, setting up data centers and the like to manage the the search, right? But Facebook and Twitter or clients after looking for a similar service actually as Google, which was keep us compliant, make sure we have our foilings down the road across the, so, you know, they had tax teams, but they didn't necessarily have an indirect tax team. And so we were that the de facto, you know, for in those cases, for those entities as they were growing, you know. And so from an experience perspective, it was really good because you meant that whilst, you know, the one half of the business and the consulting side was that was kind of local indigenous. The other half was international, you know, as those reasons, business glow, I'm able to do the conduit, the intermediary between their local, you know, headquarters for Europe and Dublin primarily. And they're the, you know, the advisors that we will engage on the video network in the other countries. I think so, you spend, so what was that initial faith like you start off as a trainee at video? What were those initially as light? And then how do the initial years like, because you spent like a considerable amount of your career at video? How does that like change? How did that progression change as you went through the right? Yeah, well, I was lucky because there was a small team, right, but very, lots of fun, very technical actually. I'd enjoyed reading the legislation, looking at the cases and seeing how it applied to the clients actually within the firm. And at the same time, it was very commercial, you know, so it was, it was, it was the technicality side of it in terms of, you know, how do you interpret this, wherever the supply, how we use it, and it involved in clients ahead of time, by the way, sometimes, you know, so this is coming down to the tracks, we think that this isn't going to take about. And at the same time being commercial enough to know, well, actually, here's where you might need some extra help. No, in terms of the gradings in that, because it was a small team, we got exposed really quickly to, to, you know, to everything, into things, or that it was the most complex pieces, or the most basic pieces of registering somebody for VIT, you were exposed right away. And I know it was even within the first few weeks of me joining, I was able to, a government, we have read new audits in Ireland, you know, in the room, understanding that the conversation and listening to us and learning on the job. So do you think your public policy background, like came into, like, help when you were talking to these revenue-water books on the government side? I think listening came into, so listening is only for the first two or three years of just hearing what's going on. And then asking the questions later, and actually, you know, learning from those that understood it. So the partner Iver was, sorry, super. And you had Jimmy Ryanard as well, and Pak Kennedy, Jerry Pageant, you know, all that for, you know, with, with huge experience in actually managing artists directly, most of them actually all X revenue. So, you know, learning from them directly and seeing, you know, how they engage, you know, how to approach it was, was, was, was very much so listening. I was there for the first two years more than more than being involved and actually doing nothing. Was it, was there defining case when you were like going through these, like, that move you from that listening phase into the speaking phase? Yeah, I, I, I'm not sure sure, there was any kind of, we said, light went off necessarily. I will say, you know, from an other perspective, as you kind of go through the first few, you certainly, you definitely want to kind of listen and just understand, you know, when you should or shouldn't speak, right? And, and what you should or shouldn't say, because quite often people say to watch, but certainly in, in the conversations with clients that we had internally, there was a really open culture about making sure you, you know, if you had a question, speak up, ask it, you know, because, you know, it wasn't that somebody had, you know, had all the answers, it was actually just asked a question, because maybe it wasn't thought about. So certainly, and those, you know, the conversations with clients, that culture was very much there, which was speak up from day one, and it was certainly on the audit side, you know, stick ways, you know, what you're talking about. Okay. For that, and you move there, and now you're going into, so you're not a trainee anymore, you've become like your manager role, and you've seen a manager role. How is that different? And also at this point, when you're a manager, a senior manager, where you also put, is the team still small? Or you guys also like expanding, and then how does your leadership style change and how are you teaching these people? - Yeah, it's a good question. Probably in the consulting, so you know, okay, you get more responsibility to manage, you know, certain number of clients and, you know, certain pieces that are actually, you know, that needs to be, so certain compliance tasks have to be taken care of, certain clients that have certain compliance pieces. But in Delo, I would say, because it was, you know, a small, you nearly had that same, it didn't feel that different, to be honest, which you know, in Delo, the, you know, for the last eight years, leading a team of 30 across a fairly big region, you know, that stepping into the role of where you actually are, needing a group of people and, you know, making decisions on what people work on, you know, what, and how work is allocated, is definitely, you know, different. It's definitely something slightly different. My approach to us, because I was being quite inclusive, is to certainly have the open conversation with the peers are those in that manager group where, you know, you're trying to figure out what's the best way to manage what's in front of everybody and then deciding how that gets done, you know, so you can make a call and that, but you obviously take inputs because in something so large, you can't just decide to go off in a tangent without seeking input from others in terms of what do you think the writing is to do, you know. - Yeah, and then also consulting is interesting than just doing like compliance tax, where compliance is like year round, it comes yearly, but consulting is when it's one big part of our business is selling to clients and selling business, how does that caveat change into like your approach as you were coming up at BDO? Did you start selling from early on and then what helped you like push and have that skillset because being able to sell to clients as an accountant is like a skill set, but many people like you know, later on their career. - Yeah, do you know, I think every, I would say, you know, meeting with the client is about being curious and having a conversation with him, finding out what's going on and seeing what's out there, and then from the air seeing if there's something you could do to help them, you know. I think that was kind of the norm as standard approach, that certainly I were led with from BDO, and you know, it was very open about, you know, bringing business into the wider firm, not just into the tax team. So if there was a client at an issue in whichever space, you know, he'd be on the phone saying, "Actually, we probably have somebody that can help you in that space." So I think that curiosity about understanding the problems that clients have was taken as kind of the only way to approach. You know, that was just taken as normal, right? - Yeah, and then how was the travel going around where he's exaggerating all through your meeting with clients and near, like because Google is growing, so Google has different offices popping up, venting with Facebook and Twitter. - Yeah, but interesting enough to be fair, I would say most of the okay for audits, yes. But far, you know, in terms of growing, you're engaging the local firm for the most part to help you do the work locally. And so we think of how people have worked since COVID, which is you've been remote for a year on the phone or you're having a call like we're having right now, if that's pretty much how it worked back then as well. You know, you're on the phone, you're making the call, you're sending an email. No, you're not on a video like we are here, but you are managing that from a location, not necessarily being the one that's always doing the traveling. - And were you, like, as probably one of the junior members of the team in charge of like coordinating all the calls and making sure taking the notes and popping them up and like sharing them with the partners, then? - We didn't have a hierarchy of who did what, actually. We did one, somebody else did it wrong. That was it, and the same with invoices. If you just sent out fees, you did your own. You didn't have us in the system to appear or something. You did it yourself. - Oh wow, okay, that's like a different aspect. So I was in charge of like invoicing for the first like a couple of years. (laughing) - You did your own. - I spent a lot of, and you collected it too, but anyway. So you sent it to me, you got paid. - Yeah, every one time. - Yeah, I had to like send it, I had to collect it, and also I had my bosses like review them at the same time. But I think it taught me a lot about business and how like what matters and like how engaging clients is two different aspects about providing service, and then also charging for that service as well. So that's like broccoli and really good skill set that I like going from there. - Okay, so now is it tricky or you're sending out the invoice for somebody else, and you don't really know what they've done, and then you're chasing to get paid. Like you've never pushed back where you, you know, you've tried to get paid, and you're trying to enter first the certain, I didn't actually ask you for this service, you know? - Of course you sent it to me, you know, he's on the work right? So you can send it over, you know? - So for like the billing clients, yeah. So some of the clients would be added like, I was like in charge like the global client, like all of their invoices, I was aggregate, right? And then I would have to build them out from like the US office, from the US headquarters, and they would have like a line by line item on what's breaking down. And sometimes I would need to go back and be like, okay, what exactly did you as a foreign office provide the service in case they, because I have to write the description on the invoice. What exactly did you do? And then can you send me the hour breakdown in case somebody asks? So then we break it down, and then there would be, sometimes it would come back and ask for a pushback, sometimes it would just go through. As long as there was a credible project, and the project was like, they asked for it, then because there would be no hurry on it. But I think at one point, I was handling closer to 2025 offices, aggregating all their invoices and pushing them in on this. So yeah, that was a fun way. - Yeah, I was a very coordinated person back then. - Yeah, I don't envy. It sounds like a tricky position to me, especially just the dispute for each or just the person in the middle of reality. - Yeah, and then sometimes I would have to talk to a partner in Europe, and for them, they would like, why do you need this information? You already did the work, I'm like, well, I need to build it for it now. So that concept sometimes would be foreign to people be like, why do you need an invoice description? Okay, so now jumping into, so you now a video, and then you transition to going in out at the, what was the prompting, what was that like, what made the decision for you, and how was that different going in? - Yeah, so I moved to the rest of Ireland in 209, and I was actually working remotely, or in a hybrid approach for three years, 209, 10, 11, after the start of 2012. And so if you think hybrid is something today, or remote is something today, this is 16, 17 years ago, right? So I say, Uber was open to different things and trying different things he was, like back then it was, it was just before the crash, I would pan to move, the crash came. You know, the office that it was going to move to was actually never opened. I moved anyway, and I stayed working, you know, I stayed working in a hybrid capacity. So I was living in the rest of Ireland and traveling back to Dublin a couple of days a week. So it worked really well. And to your point about sending out the invoices to your clients and getting paid, right? That's the asset test is, I suppose, the service, I've never sent the invoices, and it's not being paid, right? So, you know, your hours that you're charging, you know, suddenly creates a, it's only clearly discipline in me making sure that I was working, you know, fully deployed, fully applied, and that I was building and getting paid for as a consultant. That's it. If you go back again, 17 years ago, is there an opportunity to get promoted to the next level and experience in that capacity as it was back then? And I would say, you'd probably not. And even today, people still, you know, struggle with not being present. Therefore, you know, it's hard to see how we can justify bringing it to the next level and the next grade, right? So this was, you know, 15 years ago. And so there was a role came up in industry with Dell, which was closer to where I lived. And I'm actually joined there reporting to somebody in Scotland, you know, it's kind of hybrid as well to an extent. In the sense that, you know, you're working in a region where nobody is necessarily sitting anywhere. And so, you know, for them actually was quite an interesting transition for to see somebody who was already working in that capacity, you know, not being somewhere, but actually working effectively that they felt that they could bring that person in and that they would ramp up pretty quickly, which I did it's interesting. - So what was your role like, Dell? You said you had to ramp up pretty quickly. What was that experience like? What were you doing at Dell? And then how was that growth stage for you? - Yeah, so initially came in as an individual contributor, advising on complex deals, supply chain, complex audits. You know, areas where you needed expertise, right? But areas where you needed expertise were somebody who's just joined a business. So they don't necessarily understand everything about the business, but actually for this particular complex issue, yes, they can definitely value there. I think it was made people manage her after, I don't know, maybe two years, I'm not sure. For a piece of somebody's, somebody people in the region reported to me. I want to say, I look first, I didn't. I think I got a call one day saying, would you mind being a people manager? I was like, yeah, what do I need to end up, yeah, you do? Okay, you know, it wasn't something that I was necessarily looking for to be honest with you, but it looks like that's all a group. And then in 2017, I was given responsibility for the region on the indirect excite, which was kind of cradle to growth, everything from new registrations, right through to renew out its, you know, post-fact. Which is interesting, right? It was not today's the same. Regions big for Dell and Regents 43 countries, two factories, five fulfillment centers. A business probably worth 25 billion dollars externally facing, give or take, right? It's probably bigger now, I'm sure. And more on the indirect excite. So even more, you know, internal, between the factories and procurement. But yeah, it was interesting. 'Cause you, you know, you'd lots of variety. There's always legislative change somewhere. There's always a deal somewhere that, you know, somebody wants to do in a certain way that you have to look at. There's always change, there's always coming and going. So, you know, and the business, Dell's business is quite varied even if it looks, if it doesn't look like it from the outside, You know, you've got higher verse off for search. And there's also a bank, a bank in Europe as well, which could be involved in the financing of product which has been sold to customers, so you've got the full damper from a product perspective on them and how you sell it and finances is interesting. So, so what is it like working for like a company as big as like Dell and like specifically in Europe and a beer to you where as you said, they have so many different product assets like they have hardware, like every component that gets a convert either than HP or a Dell. And then as a work product and then on top of that, you have like a Dell software system and then you have like, okay, as you said, Dell fans, is it on a day to day basis? It's just go to go, go, go or like how do you guys manage all the different aspects and how do you prioritize when you're in that role or like what gets tackled first? Yeah, it's a good question. I would say the first maybe two or three years were quite kind of tough in the sense that there was a lot of a lot of change actually within the team. Things weren't with a super stable. It's got back between 2012, 2014 and then probably from 14, 15 and was to become more stable in terms of the team members and certainly stability in a team is important and understanding, you know, who you have what skills to have where they're strong and trust in a team is really important sort of people to trust each other. You know, let us do an issue. They're comfortable in calling it out. If they don't agree with you, they're comfortable in telling you if they have a viewer perspective that they're Dell shows. You know, I mean, they're not afraid that they want to be shot down or that it's going to cause a problem for them. And so, you know, that was really strong. I would say trusted group that shared the, you know, the responsibilities in the workload across and indecided how, you know, how, how best to approach it. I will say we are maybe watching the football right now, you know, different people of different strengths and certainly and different things that they like doing as well, actually. If you combine somebody's, if somebody's strong or something, usually they like it, right, because they're strong, they'll be easier to them, they like it. It's a, if you know, as you can find that that's a space that they work in, then, you know, that's something that that will become easier to them, they'll gravitate to it. And so when we looked at the, you know, the kind of divisional labor, if you want within the team, you've got audits, if a cash flow, you've got legislative change, you've got dealing with other functions, you've got deal support. So all of those pieces, depending on, you know, how the cycle runs will take up more or less time, depending on the cycle, right. So right now it's the invocating and legislative change and combined with systems change, that's kind of the big chunk of pie right now. In a year's time, it could be audits. So, you know, as, as that, you know, cycle moves, you got to, you know, you gravitate the team to, to address the workload as it comes true. But within those spaces, there are definitely, you know, different team members that have skills in different spaces. And you're trying to make sure you put the goalkeeper and goals and the defenders and defense and the strikers up front. And so, you know, you try and get the best out of the team as it were. No flip side of it is someone who said, well, you know, I, you know, just put something to get a full experience of the entire end to end. And the answer is, well, maybe not. But then if you want to, you know, is it is the writing to to wrote what's the writing for the business? Maybe it's the first question about writing for the business because we're here to make sure that the business runs and it's compliant. And then second to that is, is if there is any to do that rotation to give people a sense and experience, you know, facilitate that as much as you can. But certainly the business is the first piece you need to look to take care of. I don't think we had too many scenarios where somebody said, look, I'm not getting, you know, an exposure to X, Y, or Z, because reality is it was always more work than people. And, you know, if you need, if you want to get exposure to something else, just put your hand up because there's loads of work and, you know, it's just. So we did divide it down by, by, or say, strength, which more or less allowing to what somebody was enjoyed doing. And, and for the most part, what you find is a somebody strong and something they enjoy doing it, they'll actually do, they get way more throughput than somebody just doesn't like it. And so quite often I used to do a lot of the deal support by enjoying talking to customers, suppliers, going to a call like we're having no having no background. So I learned on the call and it's okay, tell me what's happening. And then you're learning on the call real time what the issue is. So to me, that doesn't stress me totally can. I'll get it down. We'll actually come up with a solution probably here and now to somebody else, that might stress them. So I go, my gosh, I'm going to call blind. I don't have all the facts. Well, you know, the first news you're talking to doesn't have all the facts either. They don't even know what they're supposed to tell you. So you're trying to at least the information from them on the call real time. And that was, that's something. So if you share it out from that sense, and I, you know, do I want to look at a spreadsheet with, you know, 30,000 lines? Definitely wouldn't be my first choice. You know, will I do it? Yeah, of course I would. But for somebody else, it might be that it might be the piece of their love to them. They just love located this information love, bring it into whatever shape. And so if that's what they like doing in their career, then maybe that's what they should be doing. Okay. So then a couple of follow ups on that. How do you, let's go back to the football technology? I do take like, let's say, a van back or a left back and put them into a midfielder or a striker position, put them somewhere. They're not comfortable to like because you want them to be more of a well-rounded individual, a more well-rounded tax professional. As a career goes on. And then too, how do you create trust in a team to know that you can rely on each other when you're like working on such a big team and such a big continent across different areas? Probably a couple of examples where certainly one or two where, you know, that that happened. Yeah, like going to one, maybe just, you know, moving towards the kind of change management piece where, you know, bringing somebody who's really strong and a compliance site. And understanding the business to be a lead for the team and the technology space and that change space, which she could do in her sleep. She could do what, but didn't necessarily feel comfortable doing it or wasn't something that she was necessarily interested or, you know, was going to gravitate towards. And actually, you know, bring them and support them in that space until that little comfort. I would say, Arroyo, because she was there before she felt she was there, if that makes sense in terms of, you know, that that feeling is that I'm that I'm that I'm comfortable in the space. So we had a few scenarios where that happens, but usually to me, it involved just more support for the person, you know, as they transition into that that role that you feel needs to be done. So they're comfortable in that space and they can succeed because at the end of the day, if they don't succeed and they fail in that space, you've all failed, right? So you need to make sure you just bring them to their support them and that and make sure that they succeed because in succeed in their succeeding for everybody. And certainly in that, that was a critical role because, you know, when you're the call phase, when you're at the what's the intersection of change. That will ultimately find a way downstream in nine months time or years time into a filing. It doesn't handle properly nine months earlier, then you're just going to see the problem nine months later. And so that the success of that is actually something that the team will reap without even realizing it. And you only realize that if the person did a badly. So if the person doesn't really well, it's invisible. If they did it badly, everybody knows about. Yeah. I like to know I love this phase about like after like the only time the CEO knows about tax is when things are going wrong. I mean, the reality is and maybe that's where tax folks, you know, don't necessarily sell themselves. If that makes sense, you just, you're not because you're not out there saying, oh, we did a great job. You're out there to be invisible in reality. So when somebody's solution tax is very quite, you're obviously, you know, obviously, everything's working fine. We don't necessarily seeing. Do you want to work this happens under the surface to make sure that that's what actually happens. I know I post, but you're maybe last week about the, the doc, you know, above the surface of the water, it's all cam. And then below the surface is paddling like mad. And I think that's what most tax needs look like it's that, you know, camera said other, you know, the other, the other function see, but the under the surface paddling and kind of craziness is, is in reality. So, like, as an in house tax team, how then how do you like position yourself to one, you obviously want to run a good ship. But like if you have some advice from like other directors who are running their own practices or offices and they want to steam. Like if they're trying to like cater to the more executive side, how do they position their team to be like, okay, show that this is the work we've done because that really doesn't show up if like everything's running smoothly. Yeah, that's fair. I think that's maybe actually interestingly. So my role today is in Keynes, so digital tax governance and it's about, I would say capturing to not necessarily them on the end, but those pieces that are the core of what you're there to do, which is to make sure that all the oilings are done at the right time, in the right place with the right people signing off. Now, if you're managing those in an Excel file or via email working with partners, it's very difficult to your point to be able to demonstrate at the end of a quarter or the end of six months, here's what we've done because actually you don't have the database of that information anywhere. Now, do that act into a tool that actually make sure that the first thing that is done and that is done with the right people in the right places at the right times and here's the amounts, then the ability to extract information from that becomes valuable later because you can then demonstrate very quickly. Actually, this is what we've done. Maybe one one example actually was was on the deal support site. It was always coming into a mailbox and you got questions every and you don't want to come into a mailbox. If someone sends you a question or they send a team, they'll come into a general mailbox and end as a response and end as another email and then there's not a response. Okay, there might be seven unique questions, but there might be 25 or 30 emails because there's responses on the same threads, right? No, we shifted that into into a into a work at a share point where there was actually you just make a submission and then depending on what the submission was, if we didn't get rooted to the right person, so you built a matrix in the background or decision tree. What we thought was like 25 authority questions a month turns out it was multiples of that way because everybody was getting a few questions as well. Separately. being trapped. So it's like, oh, what's the story? And the deal is for it does not much going through. And then you put it into a central database, and you realize, holy crap, there's a lot going through here. So it's yeah, it helped to kind of surface and centralize. And now you also bought a consistency, because you saw what was being asked, and you could then decide, okay, we need to do some training and this space, because actually we're getting these questions, which you shouldn't really be getting. So if you want to address those up front, you can take away some of those questions. And you also, it helps when new joiners have, you know, come in on auto teams, you know, and they don't have any information to come in. And always want to tell them about the, the rules are the logic that the business needs to, to follow in order to be compliant. And so it is continue to repeat and ask the same questions. But actually, if you've built a like a playbook of the most common cues and as you can give them the playbook from day one, but if it's all an email, you just don't simply don't have it too. We jumped into your roads at Keynes, we just talked about it briefly. The how is that different from like what you did at Dell, how is that role different from even what you did at BDO now in your new new role you came in. And also, you're also in a new place, but it's never lived before. Yeah, well, you know, obviously, I was actually living in Du Bois from 2019 to 2021, so two and a half years at Tartarland. And I came back last August, but so it's my second time here. It's, yeah, it's great. If you like it, if you don't like it, maybe it's not, but yeah, we like it. So we've enjoyed it. There's certainly the first time and returning was great. In terms of Dell, I suppose it was, it was cradle to grave, you know, on the in-house site, having moved from consulting. And actually, maybe one of the biggest differences that I didn't fully appreciate is when you know, when you're giving advice as a consultant, you're not necessarily thinking about, you know, how the other side's going to use it. So you've given advice, it's good advice, but you know, the question is, can the can the client actually use it? And then never necessarily considered it often wondered what it did with it and how they how they managed the issue later, but it never necessarily considered whether it was useful for them. But six months into my time in Dell, you know, I learned pretty quickly that actually, okay, I'm giving you a good advice, put, put, put actually it's of no value, because the voice doesn't actually help them do, you know, do anything. If, if it doesn't, so you've got to relate that device into a system or a process or a team or an outcome and then follow that through to make sure that that's actually what happens. So, you know, you might have three options from an advice perspective, but the only option is the one that the business can actually use and scale. That's the really, so you then discount two other options. No, you know, the odd time, I will say to you, and sorry, is your building credibility in an organization, the odd time you make a challenge, and so almost as I don't like that advice, you know, so you don't have to take a step back and say, okay, that's fine. There's actually there are two other options here, and then you might outline the other two options that that also exist and allow the person to choose between the three. No, the reality is they never choose the other two, because they're not able to use them. You know, you've already discounted them, but you've given them three, and now they're kind of comfortable that, okay, we fully explore everything here. And so, the option, you know, I'm happy to work with the option you've given. So, it's that I would say kind of moving from here is an answer to here's the answer for this business that this business can use today, and this is how it works, and this is the way we're going to do it. So, it was kind of just moving it past just giving it a piece of paper and making sure that that was, you know, somebody that it could use, and then making sure that that's what happened, and also communicating that with the compliance team to make sure that look that's what I chose for this deal. It's booked like this, this, and this. So, we need to see it coming here. And, you know, the question then as the, as the, you know, that the weeks and months go on, is that, is that what happened? They're not. That's what should have happened, right? No, if it doesn't then, there's a question, by the way, where did this deal go? And the answer is, well, actually, we last deal or never happened, or it's delayed, or there's some other issue, more often than not. You know, sometimes it'd be actually not, it's, it's booked. We just haven't delivered it yet. So, what's your day-to-day like now at Keynes, because I believe in my head, I see it as more like a start-up role that you're like building out, like from the ground out. Everything from scratch. How would you do it over there? It's interesting, because it's, so today I get to talk to, to, to, to, to tax leads in, you know, hit the tax, you know, tax teams from the outside in, and finding out from them, having conversations with them about, you know, how they're managing the tax function in the organization for which daily today. So, for me, like, I'm kind of naturally curious, right? So, actually having that conversation with somebody who's open with you about what they're doing, and understanding what that looks like is, is something that I enjoy doing. And again, that curiosity comes in, understanding their business, the structure, the, you know, the way in which it's, it's set up. And then, you know, the nuts and bolts of the operations of a tax team, you know, and how, how is that compliance piece managed within that function today? And for the most part, like our, our decline is, is somebody with, you know, 15 entities are more, like, working across four or five or six countries, at least, right? So, those kind of two minimums, where they have a certain level of complexity board, names of the volumes, and cross, cross country. And then, you know, on top of that, ideally, that they will also be working with external advisors in, in the different countries. So, you have that mix of people, place, and, and entities that kind of creates the volume of activity that they didn't have to manage. And I would say to you, and you're in the US, right? There's very much a, an understanding that if you're doing, for example, US sales tax, you're doing with, you know, the US is quite mature. You know, you understand, you're doing those monthly for cross 50 states. That's a lot of volume. And you need help in terms of managing that in a scalable systematic way. So, that, that was, that thought process is quite mature in the US. In Europe, honestly, think it's a little bit behind. So, you could have teams managing compliance across Europe, just like we didn't do. Managed that off an Excel file, right? So, you could still be managing three and a half four thousand filings on an Excel file, right? So, no kind of, we'll say, systematic neural affling, right? But this is normal. This is, this is totally normal. And actually, to an extent, a tax team's think, what's the problem? You know, there's an element of being desensitized, sort of fact, that's a lot of volume, which you're managing in a, you know, as a loose fashion, right? And then you come to where we are here today, where tax didn't exist eight years ago. Yeah. No VIT, no COG, no personal link of tax, no tax, no paper, like no invoices. So, then you introduce VIT, then you bring in a car purse, nobody invoicing, and sadly already, and here, UAE next year. And so, you can go from having nothing to being at the very most advanced in such a short space of time, but actually culturally, there's a catch-up, because although, you know, of Tinkwood, there wasn't a piece of paper eight years ago, not as much as a piece of paper. And so, you'll find there's, you know, there's companies here that actually have no tax person. Yeah. So, they don't even know what they should be tracking some of this stuff, because they don't actually have something who's even looking at it. It's a power 10 job for somebody else. And if this company was in, you know, UK or US, they'd have a few people, actually, probably, and they'd have a system as well. So, there's definitely a catch-up here. So, having those conversations with the team members here, you know, they're behind the curve, I would say, from a technology perspective, even if the technology that's coming from the other side, from the FTA side, from the IRS side, is going to be, I would say, so transformative to the insights already, transparency it brings to your affairs, that there's, it's going from night to day, or day to night, very much day to night, it's, so, you know, nothing eight years ago, no one would read time, you know, through government portal, or five-karnemata, whatever you're going to call it, invoicing that's now visible to the FTA, where they can then, from a systematic perspective, raise questions on the anomalies that are found by the algorithm in the data. So, how do you, so that's like a pretty good, like, like, segue into wine. I'm not pretty interested in, like, how the GCC does, like, tax compliance or tax auditing, compared to, like, how we've done it in, like, let's say, on the western front in Europe and the US. Certainly, it's all new for them, but you think they're leaning more on technology to, like, help guide them than they were in Europe and the US, as we have relied on people to do it, to find those anomalies for those ordered and, like, big-sent, big data analysis. Of course. Yeah. Of course. I wouldn't do. Yeah. Think about, you know, you'd, like, take turmeric Germany, for example, as maybe, you know, systems that were designed originally 40 years ago, or 30 years ago or 20 years ago, they actually don't have any that legacy to consider. So, think about, like, we look at, you know, the, the single-person AI company that could be the first billion dollar company. What, what was it doing? It's leveraging technology. It doesn't need, and it's starting from nowhere. So they've built it from the ground up. If you go to a tax authority perspective out here, they started from nowhere. And so you can start from nowhere and go to, you know, a real-time reporting with those insights without having to build the army people. Actually, you're more likely to be bringing in engineers. You know, you do need somebody to be able to help design what that algorithm should look like and then understand the data and ask the questions later. But actually, for the most part, it is a, it's a data exercise. It's understanding that the actual information. No, what, what, to me, what it does do, though, is that if you think that the teams that were there for the last seven or eight years have been preparing and, you know, doing the preparation of the, of the data and making the submissions, if you automate all that away, the workload in the next, you know, go year-old for the next four of the five years will be answering the questions and the anomalies that are identified in the data which is submitted. So to me, that's potentially a different skill set for somebody to receive that letter. And if you go back to my, my, at the outset, I talked about being, you know, for two years staying silent in those audits while you're just listening and learning. So now I've got that letter that's asking, that's asking questions about the data. Now, you've got to do two things then. You've got to understand what it's asking and understand what it means in your business before you prepare that response. Because when you prepare that response and that's, you know, potentially triggering another question or an audit, based on our clauses, right? So there's that just, that's a different skill set in terms of actually understanding what exactly are they getting at here? What's this question about? And then having the conversation internally, well, there's a question here and it's, do we have to somebody understand what happened? And then you've got to inform it to response to it on behalf of the company. And that's, like, to me, there are different skills and that's, that's what's coming. That's all it. That's always easier. Yeah. Based on the experience of what we see in across Europe where similar reporting has come in over the last, in the 10 years or so, where, where one study information is visible, those questions will be. And the answers have to be avoided within a short space of time. And because the information's available, the questions will just come every other week. Just it's not like you're not waiting for three years now and have a full-blown audit. There's an anomaly, can you please explain? And for the most part, the system, the computer's actually sending that automatically. That letter, and it's highlighting a feature. And so when the answer goes in, somebody reads the answer, which makes sense. So our delivering tech, of course, the leveraging tech, and that's exactly what they should be doing. The same as the rest of the word is leveraging tech. It's just for a different purpose. Interesting. So what are you most excited about about this project for the next like three to five years, you would say? Yeah, I'm interested to see how it's where you go from zero to the other extreme. How quickly does the region adapt to that? Because there will be an adaptation to what that future looks like. I'm not, I haven't been involved in that many audits here locally under the existing model. But I know from how audits happen post-golive disenvironment. It just explodes numbers of voice. It just goes through the roof. But they're different audits, right? They're on an epilogue request and a transaction and so on. You know, your book's for 2024 or 2023. It's the invoice on the 23rd of June, 2026. Can you please explain why this invoice is different to something else? And so all of those anomalies will be questioned, which we create. A whole other set of work that doesn't even exist today. Yeah, and then one like the final question I love asking our guest. Once you're done with tax, what do you want to focus on? What's one thing you want to do after tax as like a hobby or a cause that he has been putting off that you're like really passionate about? Yeah, I don't. So I balance, I think I balance things quite well. And even today I do lots of media and loads of books here behind me. I picked up software now, it's actually earlier. It's actually here. So it's here. Yeah, it's here. Just posted 60% of teams that go first in the penalty shoot-off. Yeah. All right. So if you go first, you have a 60% chance of winning that penalty shoot-off. So love reading. But yesterday in the Netherlands, one person is still lost, right? There, there you go. There's a lot of people send 64, right? So it's not definite, but there's that pressure that comes with going second. That seems to be based on the data just to do. And it's interesting, because a lot will be differences. But actually, when some, what they've done is they've explored all the numbers and actually this is what the numbers show. Which is something that makes sense. But the data actually shows it. So that's what it is. Yeah, travel, maybe. And that's why it's part of coming to De Bois in the first place was actually seeing the world a bit more. So I got straight into working after college, didn't necessarily travel the world, which a lot of my peers would have done. But we came here to see more of the world. And I think there's a plan to do that from here as well to travel more. If you're going to write a book, what's the topic on? Could be about a lot of the topic. Yeah, it's just written a book, actually. You just wrote a book once in a while. Yeah, how do the operations of the indirect tax function? The first chapter was really last week on LinkedIn. I don't plan to write a second one on that topic. I'm reading an excellent book right now, though. I would say it's, I get a few. It's written by Nathan Agrawal. And it's a novel on tax and novel. novel on tax. So fiction here. Yeah, fiction on tax. What's the plot? What's the two? I'm going to get you to name it now because I get my plug. Nathan, it's called extinction of tax, as we know it's a fictional company. And how they've dealt with change, like an ERP change. There's two changes. I kind of 100 pages in of maybe 300. There's an ERP change. And there was I think a tax implementation. There were two topics in the first 100 pages. And it talks, it's a fictional finance team. And they're trying to extract learnings from one of the tax leads who was through both of these to understand why one succeeded and one failed. So it's kind of picking through the bones of that. But it's actually really interesting to read it because it's very, it's for somebody who's worked in house. And between the politics and the budgets and the priorities and the IT teams. But it's actually the characters are very relatable. And it's actually very enjoyable. It's a, it's a, it's a, it's a most unusual one, say, angle to have on a, on a, on a, on a novel. But it's a, it's, no, I would say there's a therapy in there a little bit. But it's also kind of, it gives me, I would say it doesn't give me quite nightmares. But it certainly reminds me of some of the, some of the things that just went threadfully around from, you know, from a change perspective where you can recognize the characteristics of certain characters. You know, it's interesting. Well, I read a book like that, definitely not. Yeah. So this has been like great conversation. I loved him. You're like going through career, talking about everything. We drop a link to your article already on like the notes. And then happy to like pick a, pick back up with the US. Like follow your career along as you like go ahead and build out this aspect in the GCC. Okay. Thank you so much. I'll take care.