Saule Dagilyte is a tax partner at Sorainen
Lithuania office. In just 12 years she managed to build the tax team from
scratch to one of the top alternatives to Big4.
Sports, big and small
We started light about the Winter Olympics in
Beijing that started on the day we recorded the interview and the previous Tax
Stories episode we had with the Latvian national ice hockey player Kaspars
Daugavins. Saule shared that Spain is one of her favourite travel
destinations, especially Mallorca for hiking and her plans of getting better at
golf.
Book recommendation
Among other hobbies she mentioned reading.
One of the recent books she recommends is This Is How They Tell Me the World
Ends: The Cyberweapons Arms Race by Nicole
Perlroth WINNER of the 2021 Financial Times & McKinsey Business Book of
the Year Award.[1] The
other one highlighted as one of the best she’s ever read was Red Notice by Bill
Browder[2],
one of the previous guests to the Tax Stories podcasts.
Why to read books?
An interesting aspect of why Saule started
to read more books was that she realised she has a short attention span because
of all the online distractions. Books calm down the nerves and that is a piece
of advice many can relate to nowadays in the everyday rush. Since now
everything is so accessible online, we will more and more rely on
recommendations by people we trust. Another hint is to balance paper books with
audio books and electronic ones – they all have + and -. Books also help to switch
off from work and travel somewhere else.
Podcast recommendation
A couple Saule likes are Revisionist
History[3] where
the host looks at historical events from a different perspective and the other
is in Lithuanian where a business coach and a psychologist have a podcast Deltuva
ir Keturakis[4] on
daily matters like feelings, comparison of ourselves to the others, jealousy, why
do we do things that are risky, etc.
Burnout
It cannot be detected easily, or to be more
precise – it can easily be overlooked. Difficult time concentrating and
working, quite easily irritated, physically exhausted are some of the signs one
should take this seriously. Three weeks off and a change of the environment,
and doing something active, and being connected with friends helped a lot.
Change management
Covid learned to change as well, to get rid
of some habits like printing documents for proofreading. It’s difficult to make
the team to change habits even if the new software makes the lives better. This
is still an important learning Saule wants to master from her husband who is a
change management coach.
Youth Press
The tax world almost lost a brilliant tax
professional, as right after the law school Saule started to work for an
international NGO in Brussels uniting young journalists. She even quit a secure
public service office to lead the organisation. So I felt in her heart Saule wants
to look for ways of making the world a better place. Even if the NGO has no
money and she needs to sleep on a mattress. Managing a team of a Portuguese,
German and a Lithuanian was a challenge in itself because of the cultural differences.
Later it helped a lot to develop the tax team at Sorainen.
Why tax?
Saule didn’t like studying law, but tax
seemed to be the only topic close to the fields she liked – logic and
mathematics. For youngsters it is an amazing opportunity to practice tax and
make career in this, but one needs to like it. There has always been a big
demand in smart tax specialists, at least in the Baltic region.
Principles in building a tax team
Two priorities. First, building a team,
growing and learning together with them is a priority. Second, clients. Every
question in a way is a puzzle. Solving them for clients together with them, the
daily interactions with them is something she enjoys a lot. That brings not
only an emotional satisfaction, but also financial results. In tax the
technical knowledge is between 40-60% of the success, the rest is communication,
understanding people – both, team members and the clients.
Industries in Lithuania
Saule has discovered how fun it is to work
with some emerging industries like video-gaming, startups, fintechs. As an
example she highlighted a number of ICOs and other issues with crypto
currencies as a new and interesting challenge to work with. Like our Estonian colleagues
have worked with Warner Bros. in shooting Tenet, the Lithuanian
team has worked with HBO in shooting Chernobil series in
Lithuania. Such projects also bring a lot of joy to the everyday life of a tax
consultant.
Taxes where it’s nice to live
With less and less profit shifting and more
transparency the profits are normally taxed where the assets, people and finances
are located. So, eventually it will be important for countries to facilitate
comfortable living and working environment in order to attract investments. Where
people go, value goes. Where the value goes, tax should follow. People and
companies do not move to Lithuania because of its tax regime, but because they
like living there.
Lithuania – country of the year by the
Economist, almost
BTW, at the end of 2021 Lithuania was
mentioned as a runner up for the title of the country of the year by the
Economist, and one reason was standing tall for democratic values. The
Economist praised that Lithuania as a country would barely make top 40 among
cities in China, by population. Yet, Lithuania was brave enough to let Taiwan
to open an embassy. It also suggested to boycott Chinese smartphones because of
it’s automatic censorship soft. As a result now Lithuanian businesses have
problems related to trading with China.
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