Colette van Zyl

Colette is a tax disputes lawyer in the KPMG Law team. She has more than 16 years of UK tax litigation experience and specialise in VAT litigation. She has assisted and advised a large number of clients in relation to their specialist VAT and penalty disputes with HMRC.

Experience includes: 

• Clients in the First-tier Tax Tribunal, Upper Tribunal (tax chamber), Court of Appeal, Supreme Court and Court and European Court procedure; 
• Advising on all aspects of VAT disputes and strategic case management including drafting witness statements, advising on procedure, instructions to Counsel, alternative dispute resolution and advocacy; 
• Clients with tax disputes with HMRC on judicial review proceedings and public law arguments and specifically how to use public law arguments to resolve disputes with HMRC at the early stages of the litigation process; 
• Advising clients on penalties mitigation and preparing detailed submissions to HMRC on complex penalty scenarios. The penalty regimes that she specialises in include the Default Surcharge Regime and the Schedule 24 Penalty regime. 

Colette has worked with clients who operate in the property, telecommunications, retail, financial services, retail sector and education sector. Her clients include privately owned medium size businesses and large corporates.