Tax Summer Internship at KPMG Halal?

#1

Hi, I am a stage 2 bachelor of commerce undergraduate student at University College Dublin. I am 20 years old since 12th of January 2024. I live in Ireland.

Last summer I worked as an intern in KPMG’s CIM(Consumer Industrial Markets) Tax team in Dublin Ireland. I did a lot of work for companies like Cerberus and BlackRock. My work involved drafting corporation tax reports, preparing tax computations, drafting tax returns and rolling forward letters. My work also involved things like updating clients in KPMG’s system. clients to our system, billing tasks such as WIP analysis on clients. and My manager assigned me this work. My work as given to my by manager and colleagues. Also to note, when I was done my work, I would email it to the person I am doing it for and I would also ask if there was anymore work, they should let me know. I would also proactively ask for work from my colleagues when I had no work or when I was giving back work I did for them. The work I would send to my manager and colleagues, they would review it and send it back to me if any changes were required or I think they would send it to their superiors and they would review and make changes to it themselves. I was aware that Cerberus and BlackRock are investment companies. I had a feeling in the back of my head that these companies make money through loans and I may have even researched about BlackRock during my internship but I can’t 100% remember. Today I looked up these companies and see they make money through loans. Also the tax returns I drafted were for the companies and these tax returns were eventually going to be sent to the government to make sure these companies were paying their taxes. The Corporation Tax Reports were for the companies themselves and were made to help them with were they can lower their taxes and stuff. For the Corporation Tax Reports, I just ticked boxes as instructed by my manager and the software on the computer would draft the report itself. Then I would make some changes to the words and format and email it to my manger and also put it on a tracker for my manager.

I want to know, is the work I did haram and if so, is the money I received from internship haram? What should I do with this money?

#2

Salam aleykoum brother,

I have the same job. I am not a scholar but I already asked if it is permissible. And I was told that there is nothing wrong in it.

When you draft a tax return, you do this at year +1, all the operations have already taken place and therefore you have no influence on the loans contracted.

Furthermore, we can ask ourselves the question of the illegitimacy of the tax collected by states from an Islamic point of view. therefore when you help companies to draft their tax return correctly and therefore not pay more tax than if they do it alone (and with errors), you preserve their assets. It’s a good thing

O Allah a3la wa a3lam.

1 Like
#3

Wasalam

May Allah bless you.
Drafting corporation tax reports, preparing tax computations, and managing tax returns are crucial for compliance and financial management within a company but do not directly involve making decisions on investments. I do not see any issues with this role.

And Allah knows best!