Sarah Lane Partner

Sarah joined Burges Salmon in 2018 as part of the firm's commitment to further expansion of its strong tax capability.

Sarah has more than 25 years' experience of tax. She has previously been a partner in a Big Four accounting firm, and undertaken transactional and advisory work at two large law firms. She focuses on business tax issues for large corporates, investors and funds. Her experience includes M&A, treasury tax, JVs, fund structuring, real estate issues and tax disputes and appeals, including cross border and international tax issues. Sarah has advised clients across a range of sectors including financial services, telecoms and media, technology and infrastructure. 

Sarah enjoys the challenges that tax work presents and helping find innovative solutions to client issues, addressing legal and practical issues alongside tax technical questions. Tax advice requires a strong technical underpinning, but no client wants to read a long memo discussing tax issues across three jurisdictions or forms of taxation and be left wondering what the solution is to their particular problem.

Sarah has participated in a number of industry working groups and has written articles and presented regularly on tax developments.

Recent experience includes: 

• Advising on a range of buy and sell side M&A transactions, including international structuring issues. 
• Setting up a captive insurer for an international UK parented group.
• Advising on real estate tax issues including VAT and SDLT in respect of commercial and development land transactions.
• Advising the management team on the set up of a new real estate fund.
• Advising trustee companies on tax issues related to UK development sites including VAT implications.
• Advising both inbound and UK parented entities on the implications of the corporate interest restriction regime.
• Advising a property development group on claims under tax warranties and indemnities in respect of employment tax, minimum wage and CIS issues.
• Advising on disputed technical issues in respect of EIS claims with HMRC and on the availability of EIS relief for investment structures.
• Advising on structuring issues and options for a substantial UK acquisition by a family owned overseas conglomerate. 
• Advising on tax risk and governance issues for two major international groups.
• Advising a UK parented financial services group on the tax implications of restructuring of certain European businesses for Brexit.
• Supporting a financial services group in a project to assess the implications of the new criminal offence of failure to prevent tax evasion and re-scope its policies and procedures.
• Advising on hybrids issues for corporates and fund structures.