What do you do?

As a senior member of the CPI team, I support clients with the complex and ever-changing legislation and guidance that is R&D tax reliefs. This could be for small founder led businesses to large multi-nationals. These reliefs have been around for more than 20 years and yet many eligible companies are still not claiming. As a team, CPI work alongside our clients’ financial and technical teams, to ensure robust and supportable claims can be made to HMRC.

Why do you do it?

I trained to be an accountant at the age of 40! I felt my life was ‘missing something’ and after qualifying, I fell quite quickly into R&D tax, seconding for just 3 months and never going back to other tax or accounting. I love getting to know my clients’ businesses and seeing how they reinvest the valuable benefits gained from the reliefs, year on year.

What kind of projects have you been involved in?

With qualifying R&D being evident in so many different industries, I have supported claims in software and IT (not my favorites, we have software experts for those claims, now), engineering, pharma, biotech, food and beverage (always great to be provided with ‘samples’ when on a site visit – I’ve been to a chocolate factory and a brewery to talk R&D). The reliefs are changing with a new R&D scheme in effect for accounting periods starting on or after 1 April 2024, with rates of relief of between 15%-16.2% still available for qualifying activity claimed.

What’s on top of your bucket list?

Travel – both in the UK and further afield, with grown up kids who now have their own homes, my husband and I enjoy trips away in our motorhome with our cockapoo, Stanley. We have also found a love of cruising, having been to Alaska, the Med, East Coast of USA, Caribbean, and Asia, to enjoy multi-destination cruise holidays. Next on the list is Norwegian Fjords, booked to celebrate a very special wedding anniversary, soon!