Sonata One’s Tax Services Director, Robin Silverthorne, was invited to speak on a panel at the Global Withholding Tax Summit, which took place in London on 17 June.
With around 180 tax professionals in attendance, as well a policy makers and industry bodies, the event offered a timely and focused forum to discuss the evolving challenges in withholding tax. The agenda covered a lot of ground, with a series of sessions exploring emerging global tax trends and forthcoming regulatory developments.
Here, Robin shares standout themes from the day, along with insights from his panel.
A shifting tax landscape
Tax professionals across financial services are navigating a fast-changing landscape. The demands placed on tax functions are intensifying, and scrutiny is increasing—particularly with several major regulatory shifts on the horizon, including:
- FASTER: Progress towards a uniform relief-at-source regime
- CARF and other information-reporting changes
- The “Big Beautiful Bill” (Section 899): Which could have significant implications for withholding tax on foreign investment into the U.S.
While regulatory change and data challenges are familiar territory, what’s different today is the pace at which technology is transforming the tax landscape—both inside firms and within tax authorities. Used effectively, technology can streamline operations, improve compliance, and enhance transparency. But ultimately, the value lies less in the tools themselves, and more in how we apply them.
The digital tax revolution
Participating in the panel on the digital tax revolution offered a fantastic opportunity to explore how advances in technology not only can, but are, being harnessed to meet today’s tax challenges, including:
- Better data analytics – to really unlock the value of data held
- Customising technology to solve specific problems
- Simplifying the investor or customer journey
- Delivering superior product performance
As a fintech serving the private markets, Sonata One was able to offer a unique perspective based on how we’re addressing these challenges for more than 53,000 investors across 6,500 funds on our platform today.
In our sector, regulatory convergence is creating an opportunity to deliver pan-regulatory due diligence and reporting—while the push to raise larger funds faster across a wider investor base is making a seamless investor experience essential. We bring together scalable technology with expert human support to authenticate investor data once, to globally compliant standards, and leverage this data across the fund lifecycle.
Where technology is headed
Two trends really stand out from a tech perspective in private markets and wealth management:
- Unlocking siloed data: With legacy data frequently held across a patchwork of systems, there’s now real interest in shifting to more streamlined approach—but this is often offset by concerns around security, familiarity, and the perceived reliability of available solutions. We’re increasingly using enhanced SDKs and APIs to migrate legacy data into new platforms—unlocking the potential to leverage data across the fund lifecycle.
- Improving the investor journey: The ability to capture data once, in one interface, and streamline it across the investor journey significantly reduces friction and frustration. For example, more user-friendly documentation workflows now mean that tax forms—like the W-series—can be completed correctly the first time, significantly reducing the need for translation services, improving accuracy, and lowering operational costs.
Looking ahead: blockchain’s potential
Blockchain continues to be a major talking point. At Sonata One, we see real potential and are exploring a proof of concept. The inherent traceability and auditability that comes with blockchain technology is a dream for tax professionals. In a world where every transaction is logged on chain it’s possible to trace the entire investment flow, and this is incredibly powerful from a tax reporting perspective.
Collaboration is key
Events like the Global Withholding Tax Summit play a vital role in bringing the tax community together. While each organisation may face its own challenges, oftentimes underlying issues are shared—and by coming together, we learn from each other’s experience and build better solutions.
It was a pleasure to be part of these conversations—and to play a small part in advancing innovation across tax and compliance in private markets.
Discover more
To find out more about how we’re simplifying and streamlining tax documentation and reporting for our clients, visit our tax services page or contact our team.
