The only Oscar in the tax world – “Baltic States Tax Firm of the Year” – goes to SORAINEN

On 26 May SORAINEN was awarded the title of “Baltic States Tax Firm of the Year’ at the International Tax Review European Tax Awards in London.

“In 2010 the Baltic tax firms were evaluated for the first time,” recalls Jânis Taukaès, head of the SORAINEN Tax & Customs Team. “We were delighted then even to be nominated for the highest possible international award in the taxation field. Now this is already the sixth time our team has been honoured with the award! Only in one recent year was a Big4 audit firm ranked above us, although they seemed to be dominating the tax market in the Baltics all this time. We cannot find words to express our gratitude to our clients for their trust. As one of the main criteria of the award is complexity of tax matters handled, our team sincerely hopes that this international recognition will encourage even greater trust in our clients in even more challenging matters” notes Jânis Taukaès.

Achievements in 2015 included many significant, innovative and unprecedented cases across all three Baltic States. However, cases that we believe really stand out in the market in 2015 would include, for example, our successful representation of Statoil Fuel and Retail in the Tallinn court of appeal and the European Court of Justice, running a study for the European Commission on whether the Baltic States have laws sufficient to tackle aggressive tax planning schemes, and advising a major global producer of electronic goods and the Latvian IT association in lobbying the introduction of reverse charge VAT for electronic and IT devices.

SORAINEN and other shortlisted finalists were independently evaluated by International Tax Review editorial staff and tax law professors, consulting practitioners and tax executives from companies around Europe. The award was judged according to size (which indicates what a tax team is capable of taking on), innovation (which proves that the firm addresses tax issues that cannot be fixed by straightforward solutions) and complexity (which highlights the firm’s ability to address tax issues that are out of the ordinary).

International Tax Review, part of the Euromoney Legal Media Group, is the most trusted publication and online resource for corporate tax directors, policymakers and practitioners.