Graduate Blog

Sean - Tax

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This week it was back to training. We completed a group case study and report last week. It was an interesting project particularly as it was left to the groups to determine how best to approach the case study, when to schedule meetings around existing work commitments and how best to use members of the group who were technically stronger or more experienced with certain elements of the case study. Overall I think it was a more realistic method of training focusing on the importance of appropriate research and a worthwhile experience.

Work wise this week I was involved in a number of tax briefings for employees of a large company who were transferring permanently from different offices around Europe to a sister company in Ireland. The briefings are designed to explain to the individuals the Irish tax implications of relocating to Ireland, how they will be subject to Irish tax and how to ensure their Irish tax affairs are in order. It is also necessary to discuss any issues arising with the PwC office in the individual’s home country to determine if there is any element of double taxation i.e. in both the home country and Ireland and methods by which this can be relieved. This week also officially marked the beginning of the festive season with our Christmas Lunch on Friday from which some of us are still recovering.

Peter - Advisory

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I’ve had a busy few weeks since my last update, when I returned from Limerick I was working on a security forensics engagement with an International client. We were working in conjunction with PwC, San Francisco. The engagement involved a client site location in Ireland and a number of locations across the United States. We were involved in the gathering of computer logs and evidence across a number of the systems. We conducted interviews with the relevant IT staff to determine the cause of the security incident and identify the impact to the business. I spent the remainder of the week analysing the system logs to trace the sequence of events and verify the cause of the incident. Once we concluded on our analysis and findings we drafted the Security Incident report for the client.

The following week, I was developing an Information Security Policy for an Irish Utilities Industry client and preparing for my trip to Canada. The preparation work for Canada involved familiarising myself with the Telecommunications client documentation and conducting research to further my understanding of encryption key management and the process lifecycles.

We travelled to Canada on a Sunday morning and had a stop over in Washington before flying to Toronto. When we arrived in Torontoit had been snowing a few days previous so it was quite cold and there was still a bit of snow around.

We spent the week attending meetings to get an understanding of the client requirements and further our understanding of the encryption key management system that is being implemented. We met with IT operations staff, application and database developers and with the encryption key management system providers.

 

In the evenings we went downtown and had dinner, we normally then went for a stroll around the city and of course did a bit of shopping. I returned to Dublinon the following Friday morning and had a stopover in Chicago on the way. Unfortunately, there are no direct flights between Dublin and Toronto at this time of year.

I’m back in Dublin now and currently working in the IFSC as a Temporary Systems Administrator for a Financial client. I’m looking forward to Christmas now as I have a couple of weeks off………