Carina C. Laforteza

Carina C. Laforteza is a Senior Partner and head of the Firm’s Tax department. She is also a certified public accountant with extensive corporate and tax practice. Her specialization is in corporate work, specifically special projects, financing, tax and corporate services. She is also currently involved in tax litigation and administrative proceedings.

Carina (or Caren) does mergers, acquisitions, and divestments (including the corporate structuring and financing aspects). She has advised clients in the aviation, food manufacturing, advertising, mass media, telecommunications and money remittance industries. She has acted for the proponents of the MRT-3 project in connection with the implementation and financing of the project and securitization of the revenues. She assisted an international oil company in the establishment of gasoline stations in the Philippines.

Caren’s tax work ranges from tax structuring for both corporations (including how investments are to be made into, and repatriated from, the Philippines) and individuals (including tax planning) to tax compliance (including assisting clients in audits by the Philippine Bureau of Internal Revenue) to tax litigation (including petitions questioning the legality of revenue issuances and local tax ordinances), and tax-related arbitration. She has handled the tax aspects of infrastructure and construction projects, including giving advice on tax efficient project structures.

She was part of the team that assisted the Republic of the Philippines in defending its excise taxation on distilled spirits before the World Trade Organization and the team that advised a number of Japanese companies in a safeguards case filed before the Philippine Department of Trade and Industry.

Caren has been a professorial lecturer in taxation at the University of the Philippines since 2009. She has also taught business law at the University of the Philippines School of Economics.

She placed third in the Philippine Bar Examinations and second in the Certified Public Accountancy Board Examinations.