Dale Farm is a dairy processing cooperative owned by over 1,200 UK farmer members. The Groups activities span the food chain from providing farm inputs and services, to collecting and marketing its members’ milk supplies, manufacturing an extensive range of dairy consumer and food ingredient products and distributing these to both domestic and over 40 export countries worldwide.
Our mission is adding sustainable value to our members’ milk through supply chain excellence, consumer led innovation and building added value positions in consumer and nutrition markets. As part of this we take a responsible low risk approach to tax and comply with all relevant tax rules and requirements.
Dale Farm Group complies with all relevant laws, rules and regulations, reporting requirements, disclosures, and settles all tax liabilities as and when they are legally due.
The Group is committed to applying strong internal business controls, processes, systems and people to ensure all key tax risks are identified.
There is a Group Chief Financial Officer who has overall responsibility of the Group’s tax affairs. The Group Chief Financial Officer is supported by two Financial Controllers and a Group Finance Department who assist in monitoring, managing and where appropriate the escalation of tax risks.
The Group will seek external professional advice on relevant changes to tax laws and regulations and on uncertain tax matters. The Group’s annual tax returns are also completed by external tax advisors and reviewed by the Group Chief Financial Officer prior to submission.
The Group has a clear reporting structure to the Audit Committee who reviews the Group’s tax affairs at least twice a year along with the Group’s management team and external advisors.
The Group undertakes tax planning to support its commercial activity. It will claim available reliefs and incentives under the guidance of external professional advisors and HMRC.
The Group will seek external professional advice on relevant changes to tax law that affect the Group together with any internal business or structure change to the Group where a tax risk is identified.
The Group has a low risk appetite in relation to tax matters, assessing tax risk and making tax decisions.
Dale Farm Group engages with HMRC in an open and constructive manner. We apply a proactive approach to communicate with HMRC when uncertain/material tax matters arise, this is to ensure we are applying tax laws and regulations correctly and minimise the Group’s tax risk.
Published to comply with Finance Act 2016 Schedule19