Five Questions With RSM Canada Corporate Tax Partner Clara Pham

Bloomberg Tax Insights & Commentary is featuring a recurring questionnaire of prominent tax professionals who are willing to share their thoughts about their work and the practice of tax these days. Today we feature Clara Pham, who leads the Canada national tax office for RSM.

What is the biggest challenge that tax practitioners are facing in 2026?

The velocity of change, whether substantive, technological, political, or procedural.

Between the increased overlap of global tax policies, evolving digital economy rules, new disclosure obligations, and heightened tax authority scrutiny, tax isn’t something you can ever fully master. It is closer to a live news feed that needs to be digested before your morning coffee gets cold.

You hope to absorb the themes and understand the exposures enough so that you can translate ambiguity into actionable guidance without oversimplifying risk. The practitioners who combine technical depth with reasoned judgment are the ones who will thrive.

What tax case is no one watching that they should be?

The bias I’ve acquired is that if a case appears procedural and dry, it’s probably doing more work than it lets on. Many important tax issues never make it to court because, for whatever reason—practical, commercial, or technical—parties prefer to settle outside the judicial system.

As such, I like to keep an eye out for the cases that may at first appear to be on the fringes of a substantive issue because they suggest that something larger is in play. For example, cases on costs or procedural fairness or admissibility of evidence could all be contenders for, or early signals of, the next big tax development.

These type of cases can be more consequential than expected, especially where established concepts are applied to modern business models or cross-border elements. Not only do they tend to influence current business practices and audit or administrative approaches, they also may set the stage for legislative amendments where the outcomes aren’t politically desirable.

In other words, while everyone is watching for the next blockbuster general anti-avoidance rule case, don’t ignore the sleeper hits making their way quietly through the audit stages and motions.

What’s the biggest lesson you learned in your early years of practice?

A wonderful mentor taught me early on to try to answer questions with a “yes, and here is how we will do it”—within reason, of course.

While the most accurate response to many tax questions is “it depends,” starting with yes opens the door to a more productive conversation. It signals that you’re there to engage, not to shut the discussion down at the outset. From there, the real work is in walking through the factors that support (or limit) that answer.

Many young professionals focus heavily on producing the most perfect, technically correct answer. What I learned is that clients are looking for a business partner to bring clarity, judgment, and creativity to the table, not just someone to recite the tax rules to them.

Starting with yes doesn’t mean ignoring the risks. It means you’re willing to work through them rather than admire them from a distance.

What’s the most memorable case you’ve worked on?

The most memorable projects tend to be the ones where there is no clean handoff between disciplines—multiple jurisdictions, intersecting subject matters, evolving facts, and different teams working simultaneously toward a common objective. Examples of these include multi-jurisdictional mergers, complex business reorganizations and high-stakes succession planning.

In those situations, the technical analysis is only one part of the exercise. The challenge is in Tetris-ing the pieces together: understanding the tax, operational, legal, accounting, and commercial contexts and how each shapes the overall project.

That rarely happens in a straight line. It’s not always about having the immediate answer, but about being diligent in the process—asking questions, sometimes more than once, and occasionally to different stakeholders—and recalibrating as the analysis evolves to obtain an outcome that is coherent across all issues and jurisdictions.

And of course nothing focuses the mind, and one’s memory, quite like a deadline that doesn’t move.

What was the last thing you believed beyond a reasonable doubt?

Showing up matters more than any technical answer or brilliant plan. It can mean different things in different circumstances.

In its simplest form, it means being consistently present and engaged with the people and issues around you. Other times it can mean listening carefully and asking questions even when the instinct is to jump straight to an answer. Or it can mean rethinking a problem and challenging assumptions to see if a better path exists.

At the highest level, it can mean shifting your focus away from certainty toward understanding where the key variables sit and how they can affect different outcomes.

Showing up isn’t always the most obvious or loudest contribution, but it’s often the most impactful. Experience has been a very effective teacher on that front.

This article does not necessarily reflect the opinion of Bloomberg Industry Group, Inc., the publisher of Bloomberg Law, Bloomberg Tax, and Bloomberg Government, or its owners.

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