21 November 2019 
Amanda Darley, Head of Operations and Engagement
We’ve just come to the end of our first round of International Forums and they have been a great success, and also have the potential to develop into much more. Meetings were held in London (twice), Edinburgh, Birmingham, Bristol and Manchester and we welcomed almost 100 members to the meetings, which were very kindly hosted by PwC.
You might think that attending six meetings with the same agenda in less than ten days is like Groundhog Day, but one of the most interesting aspects of attending all the meetings was how different they all were. We are grateful to PwC for the huge amount of information they provided that we all benefitted from, but it was also the discussions around the table about those topics and how different universities are tackling them that was so fascinating, and hopefully useful to all the attendees.
The mix of attendees varied from tax managers, to payroll managers, from AP managers, to HR partners, with a few deputy finance directors, global mobility specialists and international tax managers thrown in, so the range of responsibilities and experience was very varied and meant that we captured lots of different angles to the (many!) problems discussed. There was also a huge variety in levels of international experience at the meetings, from those just starting some bigger international projects and those just beginning to discover all the unofficial overseas working within their HEIs, to those with several large projects up and running in various countries as well as some handle on the unofficial overseas working issues, though by no means did anyone think they have the whole thing covered! So everyone was able to learn something from someone around the table. We covered income tax, social security, pemanent establishment, employment status and immigration. And at a few of the meetings we were also lucky enough to have a whistle-stop tour of the current macro-economic position for education in China as well as an update on Chinese tax issues from Iris Pang, a partner in PwC China.
We’re currently gathering feedback from those who attended the meetings which will help us to shape and improve them for future rounds, which we very much look forward to hosting.
We’re also gathering some war stories and success stories from universities regarding the issues they have encountered overseas – this is both to help share knowledge between our members, but also to give you concrete (albeit anonymous) information to share with senior management at your university to help move the international risks higher up the agenda to help influence the culture of travelling/working overseas to move towards a more correct and compliant approach, while maintaining appropriate academic freedom. So, if you have a great war/success story to tell, let us know! Send a couple of paragraphs to Amanda or Julia and we’ll get in touch if we need any more information, and anything you tell us will be shared completely anonymously.
The meetings were also a great opportunity for our new Employment Taxes Specialist, Julia Ascott, to meet a large number of our members and listen to the kind of issues they are coming up against in their HEIs. Julia joined BUFDG just a few days before the first international meeting, and then spent her second and third weeks at BUFDG travelling with Amanda for ‘tax on tour’ around all the international meetings, plus a PEG meeting. (With at least 1,500 miles under their belts each during the past ten days, Julia and Amanda could themselves have travelled to Portugal, Moscow or Greece, but we try to avoid the complications of international travel at BUFDG!).
Many thanks to Marie Green of PwC and her team for arranging and hosting these meetings for us, with particular thanks to Sarah Riordan who had the task of co-ordinating everything with BUFDG. All the presenters at each meeting were excellent.
We’re also delighted to announce that as well as the new international forums we are launching a new international area on our website today (21 November) as well as an international discussion board. The international webpages pull together all relevant content on international issues across tax, payroll, counter-fraud, insurance etc. and the international discussion board is for raising questions (and hopefully providing suggestions!) on all things international for universities, so we hope it will be used by colleagues across tax, payroll, insurance and counter-fraud, as well as accountants and FDs and others dealing with international issues.
If you want updates on the international discussion board added to your daily discussion board email, as well as general updates on international events etc, then please make sure you amend your interests in the My BUFDG section of the website to tick ‘international’ (expand the ‘interests’ section about half way down the page, under your primary and secondary interests).
