Larry Wunsch is Vice President of Tax at Agilent Technologies headquartered in Santa Clara, CA. Larry joined Agilent Technologies as part of the Hewlett Packard tax team that moved to the newly created spin off from Hewlett Packard in 2000 and was named Agilent Technologies. Larry started out at Agilent Technologies reporting to a VP Tax and was subsequently promoted to the VP Tax role. Prior to Agilent Technologies, Larry Wunsch previously held the role of Senior International Tax Counsel at Hewlett Packard headquartered in Palo Alto, CA where he focused on international tax planning and restructuring issues. Prior to Hewlett Packard, Larry was a Tax Manager with PriceWaterhouseCoopers in the

international tax consulting group in the San Francisco and the San Jose offices.
Larry earned his BS in Philosophy from University of California at Berkeley in 1982; a law degree from the University of Puget Sound School of Law in Tacoma, Washington in 1985; and he earned his LLM in Taxation from the New York University School of Law in New York, New York in 1986. Larry is a member of the State Bar of California.


KJ-Agilent Technologies has gone through tremendous change from the beginning when it was spun off from Hewlett Packard. Please tell me more about the company.

LW- Agilent was spun off from Hewlett Packard in June of 2000. At that time, we had several different businesses, some of which were not closely related to the others. The industry was also in a time of turmoil with the boom and bust cycle hitting Agilent in its early years. Management made a series of strategic decisions over time to divest some of its large businesses and focus on Test and Measurement businesses. The transaction to accomplish the divesture's ranged from sales to spin-off transactions. The company also changed the way it operated many of its internal functions in order to be more cost effective. Beyond the pure large transactional focus that these changes required of the Tax department, we had to also adjust transfer pricing and other policies to reflect the changes to the business model and legal structure of Agilent. This lead to very interesting and challenging work across the tax department, which continues today.


KJ- What is happening at Agilent Technologies in India?

LW- Over the past several years, Agilent has built presence in India which performs many different functions from R&D to financial and accounting responsibilities. The tax department first built capability in India for transaction tax compliance (VAT, US sales and use, etc) which eventually led to most of the world-wide transaction tax compliance activity being performed in our hub in India. We are now building an income tax group that does pieces of our US federal tax compliance and compliance for countries such as Singapore and Malaysia. In relation to the income tax hub, our vision is build the compliance expertise in India and free up our other tax technical folks in the other locations to do more technical work and reduce our reliance on advisors and other outside tax consultants.


KJ- Where is the Agilent Technologies hub in India located?

LW- Our India hub is located in a town called Gurgaon which is near New Delhi, India.


KJ- Who manages the tax team in India?

LW- The India tax team is overseen by a Tax Manager who then reports to me directly in the United States.


KJ- How many people does Agilent Technologies have on their tax team worldwide? How many tax professionals are in the Santa Clara headquarters location? How is your team structured in the United States?

LW-We have approximately 80 tax professionals worldwide. We have about 20 tax professionals in the Santa Clara, CA headquarters location; and we have approximately 40 people in the India hub and the rest of the team is located in other areas of the world. In the United States, we have a tax planning group, a tax federal compliance group, a tax provision group, a tax controversy group and a transfer pricing team.


KJ-How would you describe Agilent Technologies to someone outside the company?

LW- Agilent Technologies has a large and complex international footprint. It has employees involved in sales and support, R&D, manufacturing and other functions in several locations around the world, including Germany, Japan, China, Malaysia and the United States. The majority of our nearly $6 billion in projected revenue for FY’08 will be outside of the US and most of the company’s manufacturing is performed outside the US. The nature of the company in itself creates a lot of opportunities for tax professionals to develop their technical skills. In addition, Agilent is always looking to new business opportunities and reviewing the way that it does business to react to such opportunities or to improve its results, providing a stream of new and exciting tax work.


KJ- How is the tax department involved with the management team of the company?

LW- We are fortunate because management involves us with company decisions up front. The tax department is alerted to changes that are going to happen within the company because the management team is sensitive to the tax impact such changes might have on the company. The management team wants to maintain a low effective tax rate.


KJ- What are some of the major issues companies are facing these days?

LW- On the operational side, the tax and governance rules continue to become more complex, whether you are in the United States or elsewhere. When the United States comes up with new reporting rules, it is inevitably copied by other countries, often multiplying the complexity for a global company. Transfer pricing reporting, E filing, SOX, FIN 48 are examples of the increasing reporting complexity facing company. At the same time, the tax laws are ever evolving, creating new challenges to companies to be tax efficient given their business models.


KJ- Why is the tax work at Agilent Technologies so interesting?

LW- In a company as complex as Agilent Technologies, there is never a lack of interesting work! However, you do find yourself in a position of having to prioritize your projects and decide what high value projects to tackle. When you come from a public accounting or law firm you are often required to work on one area or one piece of a tax project. You often do not have the opportunity to see how your work plays out. However, when you work in house for a multinational corporation you have the advantage of really knowing more about the company and seeing a fuller picture of how the work you do can affect the bottom line of the company. I want our tax professionals to understand the tax footprint, drivers and major tax issues facing the company. I want folks to have strong sense of teamwork. I want our organization to allow for individual growth. If someone has the aptitude and the desire to expand their knowledge and do different things, we will allow you to make such changes.


KJ- What do you personally find interesting in terms of your tax career at Hewlett Packard and Agilent Technologies?

LW- I love the type of global experience I have gained in companies like Hewlett Packard and Agilent Technologies. As a tax professional, it provides you with the ability to know people professionally from other cultures around the world as well as have interesting work. I have traveled extensively and my family and I even lived in Singapore at one time during my career. These opportunities make you feel more global; you do not feel like just an American citizen anymore. I now have friends around the world and am close to some both professionally and personally. This has made a huge difference on both my personal and professional outlook.


KJ- How would you describe the culture of your tax department?

LW- I feel we are succeeding in creating an open environment where there is a lot of open discussion of important technical and non-technical issues across the department. It seems to me that there are companies out there that are so large that the tax professionals get pigeon holed and/or don’t have communication across the tax areas. There are other companies that are small and maintain open communication, but the work can be more routine. I feel like the tax department at Agilent is unique in that we have a fairly large global organization and yet we have a culture that embraces open discussion and teamwork.


KJ - Larry , thank you for taking the time to answer our questions. Your perspective is valuable to the Tax Intelligence Report readers around the world and we genuinely appreciate the time you gave to share your experiences.

The Agilent Technologies tax department is currently searching for a Senior Tax Accounting Manager. If you are interested, please contact Kathleen@etsearch.com to discuss this exciting opportunity.

Larry Wunsch, (LW)
Vice President of Tax
Agilent Technologies
Santa Clara, CA

Kathleen Jennings (KJ)
Editor, The Tax Intelligence Report

Renable (REN-un-bull) adj.
Eloquent; fluent; speaking or reading clearly or distinctly.
Example: The VP Tax made a renable speech at the conference.