What is your role within RG?
I am a Manager in Ryecroft Glenton’s Personal Tax team where a large proportion of my clients are family farming partnerships. I assist them with meeting their tax reporting and compliance obligations, identifying opportunities to reduce their tax liabilities along the way.
Tell me about your career to date…
I have been fortunate enough to have worked and trained with two of the Big 4, EY and PWC. At the start of my career, I had a fantastic mentor who encouraged me throughout my training and study, and I will be forever grateful for that help. I gained my ATT qualification at the age of 24 and had the opportunity to work on a good range of clients which widened my knowledge and practical experience further. For a short while after, I was employed by Paterson Lloyd Slimmings before joining Ryecroft Glenton back in 2005, which seems like a lifetime ago!
What does your current role involve?
Having just released my latest trainee, I have recently accepted the challenge of training another staff member in personal tax compliance with a view to aiding our colleagues on large clients and at particularly busy periods throughout the tax year. As mentioned above, I am delighted to work with a portfolio of over 200 clients. These are mainly large farming partnerships, whose compliance can be time consuming with the introduction of five-year farmers’ averaging a number of years ago, which brings with it fiendishly complicated calculations but helps us deliver important tax savings to them.
What makes RG different?
I have been with RG for over 15 years and I work with a great team. Our goal is to provide a service to our clients which is efficient, cost effective and delivered to an exceptionally high standard. The camaraderie and support within our team certainly makes this achievable.
My 3 most notable achievements to date would be….
This is difficult but maybe the most important for me was raising a lovely son who has the same work ethic. I am also proud of the fact that I have achieved my ATT qualification and made a success of being a mentor and trainer to a number of colleagues coming into the tax profession, and seeing those individuals continue their employment with RG and creating successful careers for themselves.
Tell us about your day so far….
Working in Personal Tax and having a varied role means that often, throughout the day, I am dealing with a number of things at the same time and juggling priorities as required Today is a good example of a typical day for me.
First thing, checking emails and dealing with those requiring an immediate response.
Currently, it is P11D season, therefore my day moves on to liaising with clients to obtain information relating to benefits in kind and expenses payments made to their employees to prepare each employee’s P11D, obtaining approval from my clients and then submitting them electronically to HMRC.
As with most professionals, it’s important that my learning and development is ongoing, so I attended an online course looking at new and secure methods of sending and receiving information to/from clients to ensure sensitive data can be shared in accordance with GDPR regulations.
In addition to supporting clients directly, part of my role also involves supporting other professionals and, today, I then moved on to work and liaise with the solicitor acting on behalf of a deceased individual to help them understand the tax compliance aspects of bringing the deceased’s lifetime tax affairs up to date. I also had the more enjoyable task thereafter of introducing a client of mine to another solicitor for assistance in drafting new Wills for himself and his wife along with a Lasting Power of Attorney.
I’m lucky enough to have taken on a number of additional clients recently, so my next task is one of getting to know them better and understanding their affairs in more detail, then organising our client on-boarding process and notifying HMRC that RG have been appointed as agents and advisers in each case.
Knowledge sharing is a key focus within RG and our across our Personal Tax team, so I’ve invested some time today researching and holding discussions surrounding changes to internal forms and reporting to capture, in particular, Self Employed Income Support Scheme (SEISS) payments for Tax Return preparation purposes to ensure our clients understand their obligations and new requirements put upon them for the first time within their 2020/21 Tax Returns.
The closing part of today has seen me reviewing work prepared by other members of my team before releasing it to our clients and then calling a potential client and pulling together a quote for the work required.
What do you enjoy outside of work?
I love going to the gym and doing pilates each week. I also like to keep up with cinema releases and watching the rugby and tennis on TV too. Whilst some of these activities have been put on hold due to Covid-19 I do hope to get back to them in the coming weeks.
And finally, leave us with one interesting fact about yourself…
The only thing that springs to mind is that I would like to think my exceptional DIY skills would put most men to shame!