Tazaki Foods Limited’s Tax Strategy
The Tax Strategy below has been published on our website and outlines our approach to tax.
Introduction
Tazaki Foods Limited is a distributor of Japanese foods and related products. We are part of the Takara Holdings Inc. and have customers based across the United Kingdom and Europe. Our principal activities are wholesale marketing of Japanese foods and related products. Further information on our business can be found at http://www.tazakifoods.com/.
We are committed to acting responsibly in all our activities and place an emphasis on compliance, safety and quality. We strive to develop sound and trusted relationships with customers by offering support for our products and by complying with national, regional and EU regulatory authorities. In the UK we support our communities through paying a number of taxes including corporate income tax on our profits, employment taxes and indirect taxes. Further information on our group’s approach to corporate governance can be found at https://ir.takara.co.jp/en/Management_index/CorporateGovernance.html
Our approach to risk management and governance arrangements in relation to UK taxation
The tax governance of our business is led by the Board of Directors, who are responsible for setting and monitoring the strategy and delegate responsibility for day to day tax matters to the Chief Executive Officer (C.E.O.) and the managers. This tax strategy will be reviewed annually and updated as required.
Tax risks are identified across the business by those individuals by the Company’s ongoing approach based on the principles of reasonable care and materiality and escalated as necessary to the Board. It ensures that all staff are fully aware of their tax responsibilities. Senior Management discusses business changes and the tax consequences of any such business changes are considered within managers’ meetings and we maintain ongoing applications of tax governance with strong internal controls in order to substantial reduce tax risk to materially acceptable levels.
The Group’s Internal Audit Team, which is based in Japan, will periodically visit our offices in the UK and will seek to identify any significant tax risks and determine the appropriateness of the controls in place over those risks.
Where there is complexity or uncertainty as regards to our tax affairs we will also seek external advice to help us to reduce the risk of any errors materialising.
Our attitude to tax planning
We seek to be efficient with our tax affairs, appreciating that we have an obligation to the shareholders of our Group. However, our primary objective is to be compliant with the tax legislation and we ensure that our tax arrangements are aligned with the commercial reality of our business. The company will not engage in artificial transactions with the sole purpose of reducing tax. Tax is merely one of the factors that we consider with financial and reputational factors in order to comprehensively judge our business transactions.
The level of risk in relation to UK taxation that we are prepared to accept
We have a low tolerance as regards to tax risk. To minimise tax risks, any potentially significant tax risks are identified, assessed and controlled by the C.E.O.
Approach to dealings with HMRC
Because our tax affairs are relatively straightforward, there is rarely a need to communicate with HMRC outside of our normal compliance process. When we do correspond with HMRC, we are open and transparent in our communications and we will voluntarily disclose any issues which may arise as soon as is practicable. This tax strategy applies to the year ended 31 December 2017 and has been prepared in accordance with the requirements of paragraph 22(2) of Schedule 19 of the Finance Act 2016.