Biography:

Neil has worked in VAT for 33 years. He spent 14 years as an inspector in HM Customs and Excise before setting up his own tax and accounting practice in 1997. He provides VAT consultancy advice for a range of chartered accountants in the south-east of England and also writes extensively on VAT for most of the leading tax publications in the UK, including Taxation and Tax Adviser. He has liaised closely with HMRC on many policy matters, particularly relating to the flat rate scheme, and is a member of the VAT technical committee of the ATT.

Neil won the Taxation Awards Tax Writer of the Year in 2008, having been shortlisted the previous year. He is a fellow member of both the CIOT and AAT and also a member of the ATT. He was on the national CPD speaking circuit for eight years until his retirement in 2014.

Biography:

Hira is a Real Estate Tax Partner within BDO’s award winning Real Estate and Construction Group. He has specialised in property taxation for almost all his professional career and currently advises a wide range of clients in relation to their UK and global property interests. A particular specialism is UK and overseas collective investment schemes, both regulated and unregulated.

Hira is a Fellow of the Institute of Chartered Accountants in England and Wales, a Member of the Chartered Institute of Taxation and has sat on the Tax Committees of the British Property Federation and INREV.

Biography:

Claire started tutoring students whilst at University studying for a Maths degree.

She joined Deloitte in 2003 where she worked in the Expatriate Tax team dealing with secondments to and from the UK. Whilst working at Deloitte, Claire studied both ATT and CTA and also continued to tutor GCSE/A Level maths students in her spare time.

Given her love of tax and teaching, after qualifying for CTA Claire joined BPP where she trained students in ATT, CTA, ICAEW,ACCA and AAT qualifications. She was also involved in producing materials for the ATT and CTA courses.

Claire is known for bringing her wacky methods into classrooms and in June 2009 she had her maths notes published into a GCSE textbook 'Maths the Wacky Way'. Claire also has popular videos on YouTube to assist maths students.

In early 2011, she joined the Tolley Exam Training team and teaches across the CTA and ATT qualifications in our London venue. Claire is also head of our online courses, looking after the OTL courses and the Tolley Academy.

Biography:

Patrick Cannon is an experienced direct access tax barrister specialising in taxation advice and advocacy.

In 2021, Patrick launched Cannon Chambers, a client-focused barrister set without the high overheads of a presence in one of London’s Inns of Court.

He read law at the London School of Economics and the University of Oxford before admission as a solicitor in 1984. He was called to the Bar in 2003.

Alongside his L.B, BCL (Oxon) CTA (Fellow) qualifications, he is licensed by the Bar Standards Board to accept public access work and conduct litigation - and has written Tolley's Stamp Taxes and Tolley's Disclosure of Tax and VAT Avoidance Schemes.

Biography:

Helen Wood is the founder of HLN WD TX, a share schemes and employee incentives advisory business.

She qualified as a CA with ICAS in 2009 and has worked as a specialist reward and incentives advisor for 17 years, spending 13 of those at KPMG followed by 3 ½ years as an Associate Director at RSM. Helen has worked with businesses ranging from start-ups to fully listed companies, spanning owner-managed businesses, private equity portfolio companies, and AIM listed businesses.

She advises on a wide range of employee share schemes and employment related securities matters including the design and implementation of effective management and employee incentives; tax valuation of employment related securities, buy and sell side transaction support, HMRC compliance, tax due diligence and employee ownership trust transactions.

Biography:

Emma Haley is a senior associate solicitor at leading private client firm, Boodle Hatfield LLP, renowned for providing first-class and practical legal advice to wealthy clients around the world.

Emma has many years experience in dealing with all aspects of wills, probate, capital taxation and succession planning as well as UK and offshore trusts. Emma currently heads up a technical know-how team and is a regular writer and lecturer on estate planning and inheritance tax and also a member of the Society of Trust and Estate Practitioners.

Biography:

Ian leads the Mazars' Employment Tax practice in the UK.

Experience:

Ian helps employers attract and retain key personnel as well as ensure their governance is in the best shape to manage risks associated with Employment Tax and National Minimum Wage.

He has supported many organisations in implementing salary sacrifice arrangements to increase net pay and make cost savings.

Ian has advised businesses on IR35, expenses, benefits (including P11D and PSA compliance), Construction Industry Scheme and National Minimum Wage governance. This has included getting organisations ready for sale, as well as helping large employers mitigate HMRC risks.

Ian has a keen interest in cost reduction and reward strategy, highlighted through supporting businesses with travel (cars, vans, temporary workplaces etc) and expenses, including NIC reclaim projects and bringing to life new reward strategies to better reflect the business objectives and culture.

Work Highlights:

Ian is a published author on Employment Tax, National Minimum Wage and Termination Payments, as well as contributing regular articles to various tax and other publications.

He was heavily involved in helping organisations get to grips with their Covid response, supporting businesses with the CJRS/Furlough arrangements to help protect jobs and ensure claims made were as accurate as possible.

Biography:

Ibrahim is a senior associate within the International Tax and Transfer Pricing practice at Forvis Mazars LLP UK where he is specialised in providing international tax and transfer pricing services to clients across multiple industries. He is a Nigerian qualified attorney with extensive experience of African tax regimes having practiced with both Big 4 and Chambers ranked law firms in Nigeria and South Africa.

Biography:

Raminta is a Chartered Accountant for more than 10 years, working with international businesses. She is now a Chief Executive Officer running accountancy firm through which she continues to offer various tax services. She is experienced accounting and corporate tax adviser from SMEs to large multinationals, across many industry sectors.

Biography:

Rebecca has dedicated her legal career to estate planning and succession law. She is an Accredited Specialist in Wills & Estate Law and holds a Masters in Laws (Wills & Estates).

As a partner at Tetlow Legal in Canberra, Rebecca regularly advises private clients on complex estate planning, including business owners, high net worth clients, blended families, trusts and superannuation.

Rebecca has extensive experience with probate and the administration of estates, as well as estate disputes including family provision claims and contested probate matters.

Rebecca has been actively involved in law reform through the Elder Law & Succession Law Committee of her local Law Society as well as the national Law Council. She has regularly been asked to present to professional bodies and appear in the media on topics of estates and elder abuse.

Biography:

Ronnie is regarded as one of the UKs leading tax dispute specialists. Over the last 25 years Ronnie has specialised in the field of HMRC investigations and tax dispute resolution working alongside a broad range of clients, both corporate and personal. He has successfully assisted his clients to resolve a wide range of investigations, enquiries, disputes and disclosures and has built up an enviable reputation of obtaining some great results.

More recently Ronnie has worked extensively in the sports industry where he has represented a number of leading sports clubs and professionals to resolve their outstanding issues with HMRC. He is regarded as a specialist in the area of the taxation of image right payments and has recently authored the relevant chapter in the latest edition of Sport: Law and Practice (Lewis Taylor).

Ronnie is a regular lecturer at national tax investigations conferences and is one of a handful of Centre for Effective Dispute Resolution (CEDR) accredited mediators operating in the UK tax market.

Prior to joining PwC Ronnie spent several years as a tax inspector with HMRC. He was seconded back to HMRC in 2011 where he worked with a team of senior HMRC policy officials on the Review of Tax Disputes. The outcome of this review led to, amongst other things, the publication of updated guidance on HMRCs Litigation and Settlement Strategy and the commencement of HMRC pilots on the use of Alternative Dispute Resolution (ADR) methods to resolve outstanding tax disputes.

Biography:

Giovanny Téllez Cano is a tax professional with more than 10 years’ experience in the sector. A lawyer and graduate from the University of Antioquia, Giovanny also holds a masters in financial and tax law from the Complutense University of Madrid and a specialist qualification in international tax management from EAFIT University in Colombia.

Giovanny is a business adviser on all issues related to international exchange regime, tax law, international taxation and customs law, and lectures as a university professor at both undergraduate and postgraduate level.

He is the author of the Colombia country guide in Tolley’s Global Mobility / Employment Taxes.

Biography:

Sarah specialises in all aspects of real estate fund taxation including fundraising and advising on equity investments into real estate.

Her experience includes:

• complex high-value real estate transactions;
• structuring a variety of different investment platforms domiciled in a diverse range of jurisdictions; and
• acting for institutional investors and private equity real estate funds.

Sarah is a member of the Investment Association's Tax Committee and the Stamp Taxes Practitioners Group.

Biography:

Matt Parkes is a Director in Deloitte's indirect tax practice, specializing in environmental taxes and VAT. He has assisted a number of businesses with identifying potential environmental tax issues of infrastructure and similar projects, together with advising on and implementing solutions to mitigate environmental tax exposures.  Matt has worked closely with industry and authorities surrounding the introduction of significant changes to the Climate Change Levy.

Biography:

Dean Wootten has been involved in tax training for many years and lectures on a wide variety of tax matters. Dean started his career as a Chartered Accountant, qualifying with Grant Thornton in 1988. Dean then spent two years overseas with KPMG before returning to a medium sized provincial firm in Sussex. Shortly after returning to the UK Dean qualified as an Associate of the Institute of Taxation in 1991.

Whilst in practice Dean gained valuable experience including five years at partner level. The experience gained enables Dean to focus his lecturing on the practical aspects of the issues presented.

Together with Chris Jones, Dean was a founder director of Online Tutors Limited, a company specialising in providing online CPD training. The company is responsible for the tax and accounting CPD update service at www.tolleyseminars.com, the tax learning product Tolley's Tax Tutor and the quarterly Tolley's VAT Update.

Dean is also the senior lecturer on the CTA VAT route at Tolley's and the EU VAT paper on the ADIT international tax exams.

Dean is a regular contributor to Taxation magazine where his articles have got a reputation for providing clear practical advice.

In 2014 Dean worked with the Bahamian Government in preparation for the introduction of VAT in the Bahamas from 1 January 2015

Trading as Wootten Consultants, Dean and Mike Thexton provide VAT consultancy advice to practitioners throughout the UK. Dean and Mike are uniquely placed to provide practical VAT advice to practitioners and clients in a very clear manner.

Biography:

Andrea is a Professional Support Lawyer in the Tax team at Herbert Smith Freehills. Andrea is responsible for keeping clients and those within the firm up to date with the latest legal developments, including new case law and changes to legislation and practice in tax law, principally through the provision of training and drafting publications. Andrea's practice area covers all aspects of tax law, including corporate, real estate, finance and disputes tax. Andrea also contributes to Tolley's Tax Planning.

Biography:

During a long career, mainly spent training students for the ATT and CTA examinations, Simon has played a small role in starting the careers of many a tax professional. During the last 18 years at Tolley he has spent most of that time leading the Tax Examinations business but has now relinquished that position to return to presenting courses again.

Prior to joining Tolley he spent time as a student at Arthur Young (now EY) where he qualified as a Chartered Accountant, and Financial Training (now Kaplan) where he discovered a love of all things tax, which made studying and passing the ATII (now CTA) exams that little bit easier. He returned to EY in 2000, to work in their National Tax Training Team before joining Tolley in 2006.

Simon joined the Association of Taxation Technicians (ATT) Council in 2018 and is the Association’s immediate past President. He also serves on their Finance Steering Group, as well as a number of working parties.

Biography:

Gavin Little is Head of Tax Services at Interpath Advisory (an independent advisory practice created from KPMG UK's disposal of its Restructuring practice). Prior to joining Interpath Advisory Gavin spent 17 years at KPMG leading its Restructuring Tax team from 2014 to 2021. Since 2006, Gavin has provided tax services in the restructuring market specialising in insolvent and solvent restructurings, ranging from small family owned companies with external debt of c. £10 million to large multinational groups with external debt in excess of £1 billion. As a result of his practical experience Gavin is a market leading specialist in insolvency related tax matters, loan relationships and distressed M&A.