Managing VAT in family owned businesses

Typically, these privately-owned organizations span multiple businesses, are vertically integrated, own sizeable real estate portfolios and their operational control is still maintained by the original founding family member or the second generation.

For family-owned businesses, the rapid pace of change and growth in the marketplace presents significant concerns regarding the manner in which they will continue to safeguard and preserve their heritage and wealth. Family-owned businesses in the Middle East face a range of challenges that affect not only the success of the business itself, but also the professional and personal goals of their owners and their stakeholders at large.

Not only do they currently face succession planning, digitization and governance challenges – they now also face a more pertinent challenge of implementing VAT, especially given that a number of these family owned businesses tend to operate as diversified groups.

In this video, Pierre Arman, Market Development Lead for Tax and Accounting at Thomson Reuters MENA speaks to Lindsay Degouve De Nunques, Head of ACCA Middle East, to provide further perspective on what family owned businesses can be doing now in order to ensure that they use the final month of the VAT implementation phase effectively in order to be VAT compliant by 1st of January 2018.