PwC Canada announces 19 new tax partners

PwC has announced its 2017 partner promotions, which includes 19 tax professionals. They are:

Rebecca Chan, Toronto

Rebecca has extensive experience in advising Canadian domestic and multinational companies on restructuring, debt financing and other strategic taxation matters. She has led and managed numerous international restructuring and mergers & acquisition assignments and has served clients across all industries including mining, power & utilities, energy, manufacturing, retail, technology, construction and real estate sectors.

Her practice focuses on restructuring, tax repatriation planning, mergers & acquisitions, equity and debt financings, divestitures, post-acquisition tax integration planning, tax modeling and tax due diligence. She has a strong track record of developing and implementing innovative solutions and tax efficient structures.

Chantal Copithorn, Oakville

Chantal is a tax partner in the Private Company Services group at PwC. She works exclusively in the area of tax planning and compliance for shareholders of private companies and other high net worth individuals. She advises on tax planning for estates, use of trusts, will planning, distribution planning for corporations and trusts and charitable giving strategies.

Chantal joined PwC in 2003 and obtained her Chartered Professional Accountant (CA) designation in 2005. She is currently pursuing her Trust and Estate Practitioner designation.

Danielle Desjardins, Halifax

Danielle is an experienced tax practitioner with a focus on tax planning, tax accounting and compliance for individuals, trusts and corporations in both Canadian domestic and non-resident matters.

Clients include owner-managers, public corporations, and private companies in a variety of industries: real estate development and management, hotels and restaurants, biotechnology, mining, engineering, digital media and entertainment, vacation tour providers, financial institutions, forestry, venture capital funds, power technology, and commercial transportation.

Paul Dhesi, Vancouver

Mike Hegedus, Calgary

Mike’s tax law practice focuses predominately on the resource industry (oil & gas, mining) and the related service industries (pipelines, well services, seismic brokerage). In addition, he has significant experience in the real estate industry.

He provides advice in respect of mergers and acquisitions, corporate tax planning, reorganizations of public and private corporations, flow-through shares, dispute resolution with taxation authorities, cross-border transactions, international tax and federal goods and services tax.

Shiraj Keshvani, Toronto

Julien Lassonde, Québec City

Julien helps companies obtain government incentives including tax credits and grants to grow their businesses and expand R&D initiatives. His background as a software developer gives him a unique perspective on how local and global incentives can be better applied to companies in Quebec, allowing him to guide software/high-tech companies and other industries through the entire claiming process. Julien also plays a role of mediator between Government Agencies and companies to facilitate and accelerate the claim application process.

In addition to his practice in Canada, Julien and his team have built a Global R&D and Government Incentives practice in Brazil and France – bringing together years of work and insight for their clients on how to maximize the incentives available to those markets.

Jenny Li, Vancouver

Jenny has over 17 years’ experience in advising Canadian businesses expanding globally especially into the United States and increasingly foreign businesses entering the Canadian market through either organic or acquisitive growth. Her clients include businesses and business owners in real estate, retail, resources (mining, forestry, agri-food), technology, and healthcare.

Jamil Lucman, Toronto

Jamil is a Partner with PwC’s U.S. Corporate Tax Services group in Toronto. He has over 20 years of experience providing cross-border and U.S. tax advisory services, including 8 years with PwC in Chicago where he focused on international tax and cross-border transactions.

Shabnam Malik, Oakville

Shabnam leads teams to provide cross-border Canadian and U.S. personal taxation services, compensation management and social security tax planning to her multinational clients. She specializes in managing multifaceted issues arising from having a globally mobile workforce. Through business transformation and technology, PwC assist clients to be compliant with a consistently evolving expatriate tax environment. Her key focus is to ensure PwC delivers a consistent, high quality and value-added experience to client collaborating closely with them to plan and deliver innovative solutions.

Scott McDonald, Edmonton

Scott Murtha, Vancouver

Scott advises clients on a broad range of personal and corporate tax planning matters as part of an integrated business law approach. He often works together with other professionals in a trusted advisor role to high net worth individuals in need of tax planning and corporate transactional advice and to businesses going through sale, transition or succession.

Andy Paton, Toronto

Andy’s practice focuses on the financial services sector, and he helps his clients develop and document transfer pricing policies related to their core business activities and intra-group financing. By working closely with PwC’s extensive global network he helps clients navigate the changing world of transfer pricing by providing practical local experience. He has a strong track record of developing transfer pricing policies based on the specific needs of clients.

Andy is a frequent speaker on transfer pricing at PwC’s global transfer pricing conferences and has previously taught the IBFD’s course on intra-group financing.

Sunil Purbhoo, Toronto

Suni joined PwC’s Global Enterprise Tax Solution team in April 2017. He was previously Indirect Tax Leader (Canada) with General Electric. In that role he was responsible for managing indirect tax risk for all of GE’s capital and industrial businesses. He managed a small but highly effective team with a focus on indirect tax compliance, cross-border transactions, mergers, acquisitions and dispositions, internal reorganizations, tax dispute resolution and related tax advice.

Dave Santerre, Montréal

Brandi Scales, Toronto

Brandi works with her clients to find innovative and efficient solutions to their modern mobility needs. She leads teams to help clients solve their most critical business issues through organizational transformation, improving the performance of their workforce, developing and moving talent around the world and managing their human capital risks. She also has extensive experience in working with clients from the financial services industry.

Sheila Snyder, Vancouver

Sheila is a US and Canadian immigration attorney, currently practising US business immigration law. She has been working exclusively in immigration law since graduating from law school in 2004. She has extensive experience in a wide array of US immigrant and nonimmigrant classifications, as well as family-based and naturalization cases. Specifically, her US nonimmigrant experience includes the following classifications: B-1 (business visitors including in lieu), E-1 (treaty traders), E-2 (treaty investors), E-3 (Australian professionals), F-1 (student reinstatement), H-2A (temporary agricultural workers), H-1B (professionals), H-3 (trainees), J-1 (trainees/interns), K-1/K-3 (fiances, spouses), L-1 (intracompany transferees), O-1 (extraordinary ability workers), Q-1 (cultural trainees), and TN (Canadian and Mexican professionals). Her US immigrant classification experience includes EB-1 (Extraordinary Ability, Multinational Manager, Outstanding Researcher), EB-2 (National Interest Waiver and Master’s PERM), EB-3 (PERM), and family sponsorship.

Jean-François Thuot, Montréal

Jean-François has extensive, in-depth expertise in providing tax services to private companies in Greater Montreal, including planning, strategy and corporate policy in business acquisitions, sales and mergers and estate planning. He also represents clients in negotiations with taxation authorities and has strong relations with both Canada Revenue Agency and Revenue Quebec.

Jason Vincze, Toronto

On April 1, 2017 Jason joined PwC together with circa 600 of his former GE Tax colleagues from around the world in an innovative transaction forming a brand new division within PwC known as Global Enterprise Tax Solutions. GETs continues to deliver comprehensive tax services and solutions to GE, with other significant customers on the horizon, in a globally and functionally integrated manner with an “in-house” feel.

Jason was Senior Tax Counsel and Country Tax Leader at GE with a focus on Canadian tax planning, including cross-border financings and transactions, mergers, acquisitions and dispositions, internal reorgs, tax dispute resolution and related tax advice, in relation to all of GE’s capital and industrial businesses.