Audit Committee Tax Adviser — Distributed Sales and Establishment Exposure

The mandate

A digital-platform audit committee wants a recurring answer to whether its distributed sales model remains within the facts supporting existing establishment-risk advice. Regional staff increasingly negotiate through remote channels, travel across markets and rely on central signatures, making formal approval charts an incomplete account of what actually happens. An eight-month tax adviser will challenge the evidence and governance from 26 October 2026. The work concerns a standing risk question, not a one-off legal opinion or an instruction to restrict all cross-border selling.

The adviser will help directors examine how customer discussions, commercial authority, personnel location and actual contract conclusion interact in the reviewed operating model. Local professional advice remains essential; the missing contribution is a consistent method for asking whether its assumptions are still true. You will shape questions that distinguish occasional activity from recurring practice and documented delegation from informal authority. A travel register or signature policy may be useful evidence, but neither should become a substitute for understanding the conduct that could change the group's tax exposure.

The retainer reserves four days monthly for evidence review, a tax-and-legal working session and a chair briefing. Attendance at the alternate-month audit committee is included; additional workshops are separately agreed before using extra capacity. Complete questions receive acknowledgement within one working day and a substantive written view within three working days. The chair reviews the engagement at month eight and may propose renewal for committee approval. Up to two unrelated engagements may coexist, provided the reserved review capacity and secure information separation remain demonstrable.

There is no line authority and no executive responsibility. Management decides personnel deployment and commercial processes, counsel provides legal interpretation and directors accept risk within their established powers. No fiduciary office is offered. Existing work for a competing platform, an affected sales intermediary or an adviser whose opinion is under review must be disclosed. The chair agrees recusals or restricts access; material unresolved conflicts preclude the engagement. You will not certify that exposure is absent or represent the group in a dispute, and the fee is unaffected by the advice management prefers to hear.

What you will own

• Challenge the establishment-risk narrative against actual sales conduct, asking how customer negotiation, informal authority and market presence differ from the formal policy description used in existing technical advice.
• Test the evidence supporting reviewed assumptions by comparing selected contract journeys and personnel activity, highlighting missing facts that local advisers need before their conclusions can be relied upon for committee oversight.
• Recommend drift indicators that distinguish isolated exceptions from recurring operating practice, helping directors recognise when a sales-model change should trigger refreshed analysis rather than routine policy acknowledgement.
• Press tax and legal owners on the limits of signature charts and travel records, shaping a fuller fact-gathering approach without assuming those administrative controls alone resolve the technical risk question.
• Review proposed escalation choices for their commercial and governance consequences, advising the chair on where management needs to obtain local advice or clarify actual authority before accepting continued exposure.
• Counsel the committee on transparent treatment of uncertainty, preserving an evidence-backed distinction between reviewed comfort, unresolved facts and accepted risk rather than allowing all three to appear as a single green status.

Candidate qualifications

• Demonstrate substantial permanent-establishment and treaty judgement in a technology or cross-border services environment. Describe a case where actual commercial conduct changed your assessment despite apparently compliant formal delegation. Explain the facts you sought and how your challenge altered governance or advice; citing a general rule without connecting it to operating evidence will not establish the needed perspective.
• Evidence advisory communication with senior tax, legal or board stakeholders where you influenced risk understanding without owning business execution. You should be able to disagree constructively with an existing opinion, identify its assumptions and request targeted local analysis rather than substitute a universal personal conclusion for the professional responsibilities of regional advisers.
• Bring twelve to eighteen years of tax experience and Chartered Accountancy or equivalent specialist standing, with credible Asia-Pacific exposure. Your knowledge must include how establishment analysis, treaty eligibility and transaction facts interact, while recognising jurisdictional uncertainty. Technical confidence should be matched by willingness to state what cannot be concluded from the evidence currently available to the committee.
• Protect the agreed monthly review days, alternate-month attendance and three-working-day written response window. Show practical handling of multiple confidential retainers, including disclosure of direct or indirect relationships with reviewed platforms, intermediaries or advice providers. Recusal must be meaningful: a nominal information barrier is not enough if it prevents you from contributing independently to the standing question.
• Have developed fact-gathering and review methods that operating teams could use repeatedly. You should distinguish useful indicators from exhaustive monitoring, handle sensitive personnel and customer evidence carefully and explain risk without creating unnecessary fear. The role needs specialist judgement that improves board questions, not an attempt to become the group's shadow tax executive.

Application

Applications for this mandate are received in one way only: through the India Board Terminal's application process. It is automated end to end. Your Executive Passport travels to the mandate holder in its confidential form, your answers to the three questions below are read before anything else in your file, and every stage that follows is recorded on your applications page.

There is no address to write to and no intermediary to call. The mandate holder reads what the Terminal delivers and nothing else, which is what keeps the process the same for every applicant and keeps your name out of it until you release it. Applications close on 14 October 2026. Mandate reference CVU-ADV-2026-IND-023.