HSP Group Launches Global Tax & Accounting Compliance Practice and Appoints Tom Lickess as VP, Head of Tax

Closing the Mid-Market Tax Gap

Growing companies today operate like multinationals, but their tax and accounting infrastructure rarely keeps pace.

For the CFOs, Controllers, and Heads of Finance running businesses with two to fifteen overseas entities, the reality is familiar: a patchwork of local accountants in each market, a spreadsheet calendar chasing deadlines, and a Big 4 memo filed somewhere that no one has fully implemented. Transfer pricing documentation that describes a business and operating model that no longer reflects the reality. VAT obligations in markets where the company has been operating for years without registration, leading to tax leakage. A permanent establishment question nobody can definitively answer before a board meeting.

This is the default operating state for most SMEs with global entities and operations, and it carries concrete consequences: alongside the obvious domestic and international tax pitfalls, delayed expansions, failed diligence, cash leakage, personal liability for the executives and directors of these companies, and career-risking consequences for the finance leaders who assured these stakeholders that “everything was handled.”

What the market lacks is a function: the combination of technical judgment, local execution, and live digital platform-led visibility that large enterprises staff internally, and that most growing companies cannot hire for themselves.

That is exactly what the HSP Global Tax & Accounting Compliance Practice is built to deliver.

An In-House Tax Function, Without Building One

The new practice gives SMEs access to the same command-and-control capability a Fortune 1000 tax team has, without the headcount plan:

• Technical consulting that is practical and operational: permanent establishment assessments, transfer pricing aligned to how the business actually works, entity rationalization, accounting health checks, and cross-border transaction design that produces advice the business can implement.
• In-country execution: corporate income tax, withholding tax, VAT/GST/IVA, statutory accounts, local GAAP, and group reporting delivered by local experts across 100+ countries.
• GateWay as the control tower: HSP’s proprietary platform connects Tax and Books modules in a single system, with one compliance calendar, one document audit trail, and one live status view across every jurisdiction. For the first time, the entire global footprint is visible from one place.
• Built for SME scale and price: structured for companies that are too complex for a bookkeeper but too lean to build a global department, and priced for that reality.

“Growing companies have been stuck choosing between two bad options: a sprawling network of local vendors with no strategic view, or a Big 4 advisory paper that is technically brilliant and operationally dysfunctional,” said Larry Harding, CEO & Founder of HSP Group.

“We built this practice because there is a better way — and because our clients have been asking for it. Technical judgment and local execution in one system, at a price point that reflects the reality of running a mid-market finance team. That is not a new category for us. It is the original problem HSP was built to solve.”

Tom Lickess Joins as VP, Head of Tax

Leading the practice is Tom Lickess, a UK and Australian Chartered Accountant with more than 25 years of global tax consulting and compliance experience. Tom joins HSP Group from Vistra, where he built the former Radius global Tax Advisory team and served as Global Head of Tax & Accounting Solutions, scaling the capability across the world’s most complex international markets.

Tom’s career spans the Big 4 in Europe and a decade in APAC, leading global tax and accounting teams for multi-jurisdictional clients across the full lifecycle of international expansion, from entity design and market entry through ongoing compliance, restructuring, and M&A readiness. His focus is on practical, operationally grounded global tax solutions that take problems away from finance teams and make international compliance work the way it should: predictably, transparently, and without the client becoming the project manager.

“What HSP has built is genuinely different,” said Tom Lickess, VP, Head of Tax. “The combination of technical consulting, in-country execution, and GateWay as a live operating system is what every CFO, FD and FC at a fast-growing multinational business has wanted but has rarely found. I’ve spent my career helping global companies navigate exactly this complexity. Doing it through a platform that connects strategy to filing to visibility — in one place, at the scale and price point that mid-market finance teams can actually work with — is the right model. I’m excited to help HSP’s clients build something defensible.”

Tom is based in Bath, UK.

Built for the Companies That Come Next

The Global Tax & Accounting Compliance Practice is available to both new and existing HSP clients. Companies already using HSP’s EOR, payroll, HR, or entity management services gain a natural extension: the next layer of risk after international hiring is tax presence, VAT obligations, and books that can explain themselves to a board or a buyer.

For companies approaching a raise, entering a new region, or preparing for a sale or audit, the practice offers a structured starting point: a Global Tax & Accounting Diagnostic that maps the current entity and filing footprint, identifies PE and VAT exposures, reviews transfer pricing documentation against operations, and produces a forward-looking compliance calendar, giving finance leaders a clear picture of where they stand and what it takes to reach a fully defensible tax position.

The goal is straightforward: expansion stops being a compliance gamble, and the next country launch comes with a known tax posture rather than six months of local vendor hunting.

Talk to an expert about what the Global Tax & Accounting Compliance Practice can do for your business.

About HSP Group

HSP Group is a global expansion software and services firm that helps mid-market companies establish and operate international businesses across 100+ countries. Through a combination of technical consulting, recurring EOR, payroll, entity management, accounting, tax, and HR services, all connected through the GateWay global expansion management (GXM) platform, HSP provides the operational infrastructure growing companies need to move faster, with less risk, in every market they enter. For more information, visit hsp.com.