Chown Dewhurst LLP¹ brings together lawyers, economists and accountants to crack international tax problems. The principals are distinguished in their profession, and we work both for large and medium-sized companies, international families, investment funds, investment managers, and also for smaller, often closely-controlled, businesses, high-income individuals and mobile executives.

We have excellent international professional connections, being members of, and acting as secretariat to, the International Tax Specialist Group www.itsgnetwork.com, a non-exclusive group, together with a much wider informal network. ITSG members are, like us, recognised experts, giving us access to a wide range of talented people accustomed to working together to provide high quality, practical, and creative international tax advice on a worldwide basis.

John Chown is a founder of the Institute for Fiscal Studies www.ifs.org.uk while John Dewhurst is a member of the Council of the Chartered Institute of Taxation www.tax.org.uk having formerly chaired their International Committee. Michael Cadesky, chairman of ITSG, is also a former international chairman of STEP www.step.org.

Our approach is to analyse the client's problem (which is not always what they thought it was) and find a tailored solution. We do not use ‘schemes’. As a client you will meet one or more individuals who will actually be handling the work, delegating and bringing in others as and when necessary. We are all capable of operating independently without the support of a large and expensive organisation.

1 The business was founded as J F Chown & Company Limited in 1962 and was reorganised into the then newly available form of a limited liability partnership in 2001.

Latest News

John Dewhurst is handing over the chairmanship of the CIOT’s Advanced Diploma in International Taxation Sub-Committee to John Cullinore and has been appointed Vice-Chairman of the Education Committee.
He is also closely involved with the Worshipful Company of Tax Advisers which recently acquired its Royal Charter. His principal role there at present is as Chairman of the Charities Committee.
In April 2010, John Chown went to Bucharest (visited several times before) with the Lord Mayor’s party. He was the round up speaker at a seminar on Public Private Partnerships where he mainly dealt with the need to see this in the context of developing capital markets and the pensions system which was admitted to be in need of reform. He mentioned the dangers of using PPPS to modify national accounts, a point now being addressed by the incoming UK government. He had interesting meetings with the National Bank and the Stock Exchange.
In June 2010, he attended the Konigswinter conference in Germany and the meeting of the Ad Hoc Council in Madrid, having attended the latter meetings in Zagreb, June 2009; Stockholm, October 2009; London January 2010 and Brussels March 2010. The main topics were inevitably the future of international markets regarding which he contributed to a study last year, and now is now expanding his paper on the future of EMU in the light of the Greek crisis.
The International Tax Specialist Group held its annual conference in Zurich in October 2009 and will be meeting in Boston in September 2010.