Barry Horne

International Tax:

He helps his clients navigate the complex cross-border tax implications of their transactions to maximize their crossborder tax benefits. This includes:

• developing tax effective structures;
• maximizing tax attributes in companies and for their investors;
• managing the tax consequences of inbound investments (e.g., financing, repatriating funds from those investments, acquisitions, and sales);
• minimizing withholding tax on the repatriation of funds;
• interpreting tax treaties;
• structuring royalty arrangements with non-residents and structured financing; and
• advising on the use of hybrid entities and instruments (including avoiding or minimizing the effect of domestic and treaty based anti-hybrid rules).

He also works with transfer pricing to help define and allocate functions and risks and to manage the drafting of transfer pricing agreements. Lastly, he works with foreign tax and other advisers to minimize the combined effective tax rate for multinational groups by, among other things, maximizing the creditability of Canadian income and withholding tax for foreign tax credit purposes.

M&A Tax:

His M&A tax practice revolves around:

• tax due diligence;
• structuring acquisitions and dispositions (e.g., maximizing cross-border capital, utilizing tax attributes (e.g. safe income) to reduce tax on the sale, pre-closing reorganizations to remove excluded assets from the target, financing the deal, structuring earn-outs, and identifying the appropriate acquisition structure (e.g., exchangeable share transactions));
• identifying opportunities to minimize tax post-acquisition;
• streamlining corporate structures and integrating acquired operations in the global structure post-acquisition (e.g., removal of foreign affiliates on a tax effective basis);
• advising on the language of acquisition agreements (e.g., tax indemnities, representations and warranties, section 116 withholding provisions, and gross-up clauses); and
• providing M&A strategic advice.

Crucial elements of his M&A tax practice include advising on private equity transactions and providing insights on complex collateralized loans for M&A financing. This area emphasizes his comprehensive understanding of the tax implications of M&A transactions.

He has been practicing for 32 years. The last 5 years have been with a big 4 accounting firm. He learned additional skills while with that firm, and performed a number of roles which are set out below:

• International Tax Services (ITS) Group – A member of a group of subject matter experts that deal with international tax issues.
• International Global Structuring (IGS) Group – A member of a small group of ITS partners who identify crossborder opportunities for the Canadian affiliates of foreign multinationals.
• Legal Business Solutions (LBS) Group – One of the founding members of the group organized to provide advisory services (e.g., strategic planning, operational design, technology solutions, and alternative legal services) to the legal departments of large corporations and law firms.
• Pathfinder – A member of the group providing tax and legal advice to foreign businesses establishing operations in Canada.
• International Business Reorganizations (IBR) Group – The Canadian representative for the IBR group, an international team of lawyers from the affiliated law firms that advise large multinationals with international reorganizations.  He not only provided Canadian tax advice, but he also coordinated the timely and smooth delivery of services by advisors in various functions (e.g., tax, legal, and treasury) from around the world using project management tools.