What do you do?

Typically I save businesses money. Improve margins. And boost working capital. All through the medium of Indirect tax!

I’ve helped retailers reduce their costs of loyalty schemes and increase margin on products they sell; healthcare businesses reduce the amount of VAT they owe to HMRC and stacks of businesses, across a multitude of sectors, resolve their disputes with HMRC.

Why do you do it?

Because I absolutely love it. Businesses fascinate me and I love helping people. Because VAT is a ‘transaction tax’ I really get to go under the skin of a business understanding everything they do, in order to help manage their VAT affairs. I like to think its because I’m very curious. But it could be that I’m just really nosey I guess?

What kind of projects have you been involved in?

In the past I’ve helped some clients recover literally hundreds of millions of VAT from HMRC. I’ve kept others in business by persuading HMRC they owe millions less VAT than HMRC were asking for, enabling the business to continue to trade and its VC owners to get a transaction away. I’ve helped social landlords build more houses for people in need by reducing the costs involved in their construction and I’ve lost count of the millions of pounds of working capital I have created for UK businesses by helping them better manage the flows of VAT in and out of their business.

I’ve even managed to help some employers put extra cash in their DB pension schemes through VAT and more recently I’ve helped a lot of businesses recover VAT that they overpaid in the 1980’s and 1990’s. And made HMRC pay them interest back from them too.

Back in 2009, from the maternity wing of a Manchester hospital I conceived the idea and led the project to persuade HMRC to use my version of their new legislation for hot food so as to avoid the #pastytax issue that was trending on Twitter at the time, was on the front page of newspapers and even made the news at 10 (all whilst trying to support my wife and newly born son!)

What’s on top of your bucket list?

I want to catch a double-figure salmon on a fly. Sadly a whole host of (preventable) environmental factors are causing a huge decline in salmon numbers in the UK so I need to get a move on (or go overseas…), but they truly are the pinnacle of river fish for fly anglers (even really rubbish ones like me) and having started fishing for them only in the past few years. I’m truly hooked…