Biography:

Karen is an experienced employee benefits lawyer with more than 20 years' experience in advising companies of all sizes in relation to their employee benefit and remuneration issues. She trained and worked for leading law firms Baker McKenzie LLP and Linklaters LLP and spent three years as a remuneration consultant at Ernst & Young LLP. Prior to co-founding Cooper Cavendish, Karen headed up Osborne Clarke LLP's employee benefit practice for 15 years.

Karen is a thought-leader and regularly speaks and presents at industry conferences and events. She is a member of the Small Quoted Companies Alliance Share Scheme Committee and the Share Plan Lawyers Organisation. Karen is also the author of a wide range of legal publications including the chapter on executive remuneration in Sweet & Maxwell's 'Corporate Governance', the chapter on employee share schemes in Jordan's Company Administration and she contributes regularly to Tax Journal, and Practical Law (PLC). She is ranked as a leading individual on employees share schemes in Chambers and Partners and was recognised in the 2015 International Tax Review Women in Tax Leaders (a comprehensive guide to the world's leading female tax advisers).

Biography:

Andrew Rainford BA (Hons) CTA ATT is a Tax Advisor, author and editor living in North Wales, specialising in advising private clients and other advisers. He has a particular interest in advising Owner Managed Businesses, families and HNW individuals. Andrew trained and qualified with a boutique firm of accountants based in London, before taking over the operation of the tax department of a smaller firm in North Wales, whilst regularly contributing to various professional tax publications. Andrew also previously worked on EY's personal tax consultancy team. Andrew can be contacted at andrew@reddragontax.co.uk.

Biography:

Matthew has over 21 years’ experience gained in big4 practice, he joined BDO UK LLP as a Partner in May 2022 to lead the Customs, Excise and International Trade team.

Matthew focuses on providing advisory and compliance services to drive operational and duty efficiencies for businesses which import, manufacture, pack, distribute and export goods both within the UK and globally.

He has a particular interest in businesses within the Alcohol industry working with micro producers to global brands alike, gaining practical experience (even driven a forklift) on secondment to a UK production and distribution warehouse of a major brand.

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:

Becky is a member of the Employment, Pensions & Immigration group and advises on all aspects of employment law, both contentious and non-contentious.

On the contentious side, she has expertise in dealing with a broad range of employment tribunal claims, including unfair dismissal, discrimination on the grounds of age, sex and disability, part-time working and unlawful deductions of wages.

Her non-contentious experience includes drafting and advising on a wide range of employment contracts, consultancy agreements and company policies and procedures.

Becky also advises in relation to post-termination disputes with former senior executives and regularly advises on settlement negotiations and severance terms.

She regularly publishes articles on all aspects of employment law, speaks at seminars and provides bespoke client training.

Biography:

Joanne is a chartered accountant who brings with her seven years' experience at a Big Four accounting firm. As a Tax Manager at ForrestBrown, she advises a wide range of clients about the benefits of R&D tax incentives. Joanne also contributes to Tolley's Taxwise.

Biography:

Therese advise Swedish and foreign companies in VAT issues. Therese is specialised and mostly hired when the Swedish Tax Agency’s files lawsuits against companies concerning VAT.

Therese has experience from the Swedish Tax Agency, as a Law Clerk at the Stockholm Administrative Court, working with VAT for Mazars and EY, as well as other firms. She lectures paralegal law students at Påhlmans Institute of commerce. She has also published several articles in Bloomberg, in Svensk Skattetidning, and Legally Yours focused on VAT.

Therese also gives advice when clients move into new markets or enters a new business field, and for the ongoing business. She also help her clients in obtaining advance rulings from the Swedish Skatterättsnämnden.

With a broad mindset, integrity, deep knowledge, and an attitude to always look for the customer needs Therese has a great track record for her clients. Her clients are in many branches; IT, real estate, animation, outdoor life, construction, building, finance etc.

Biography:

Simon McKie is the Chairman of McKie & Co which won the ‘Best Tax Consultancy Team’ award in the 2012 and 2015 Taxation Awards and the Society of Trust & Estate Practitioners award for ‘Boutique Firm of the Year’ in 2009/2010 and was most recently shortlisted in 2019.

Simon specialises in private client taxation providing bespoke tax advice to solicitors, accountants and private clients themselves.  This includes inheritance tax planning, advice on domicile and changes of residence status, offshore trusts, the remittance basis, the making of voluntary disclosures to HMRC and the review of existing tax structures.  In addition, he has a particular expertise in the management of complex tax legislation and the provision of expert witness reports.

He is the joint author of Tolley’s Estate Planning and McKie on Statutory Residence.

He is a member of both the Private Client (UK) and Private Client (International) sub-committees of the Chartered Institute of Taxation and a member of the Technical Committee of the Society of Trust & Estate Practitioners.

Biography:

Caroline is Head of Real Estate at Crowe UK LLP and a Tax Partner within the Corporate tax team. She has specialised in Property Tax matters for nearly two decades. Caroline has advised clients across the spectrum of real estate parties including HNWIs, property developers, international investors, family offices and institutions and also across various property classes including hotels, care homes, industrial units and residential properties. Caroline has significant experience in understanding the various interactions of all the taxes that can arise during a property investment cycle and specialises in tax structuring of real estate transactions. Caroline is a regular speaker on Property tax matters, for CIOT, STEP and ICAEW. She is also a member of CIOT Property committee, a member of the British Property Federation tax committee and a member of Stamp Taxes Practitioners Group.

Biography:

Nathalie Varga is a managing director at PKF Österreicher & Partner GmbH & Co KG and advises companies of various sizes and sectors on all tax and business management issues. Since passing the tax advisor exam in 2016, she has also specialised in VAT issues.

She professionally advises clients on a daily basis on all domestic and international VAT issues, while always keeping an eye on other tax topics as well. In addition to VAT, Nathalie is also an expert in the field of group taxation.

Biography:

Former Payroll and Expenses manager for the Daily Telegraph. Former head of Payroll Alliance responsible for the delivery of payroll training courses, 7 BTEC payroll qualifications and subscribed membership. Representing members on government panels for over 20 years.

She was the first editor of Payroll World magazine (now Reward Strategy).

Member of the Reward 300 2020 and an associate member of the British Computer Society. Regular contributor to Taxation magazine on RTI and payroll issues.

Updating author of the Payroll Fact File for 30 years.

Winner of the Strathearn Award for Lifetime Achievement 2009.

Currently specialising in payroll training and consultancy.

Biography:

Ian is a knowledge counsel in the tax department at Travers Smith. He has a particular focus on tax issues relating to the asset management sector. Ian regularly writes articles for tax publications. Ian contributes to Tolley's Tax Planning.

Biography:

Justine Riccomini is head of tax (employment & devolved), ICAS. She joined the ICAS tax department in November 2016. Prior to this, Justine specialised in employment taxation and strategic HR projects, with the last five years spent running her own consulting business in conjunction with two projects as a senior policy advisor at the Office of Tax Simplification. Her 19 years in practice was preceded by ten years at HMRC.

Email: jriccomini@icas.com.

Biography:

Matteo is Tax Adviser in PKF Studio TCL - Tax Consulting Legal based in Italy, in Genoa, Milan and Rome, since 2016. He qualified as a Chartered Accountant at Genoa’s Order of Chartered Accountants in 2019.

He gained experience in VAT compliance and International indirect taxes as it has been identified as Indirect Tax Expert in Italy within the PKF Network.

Biography:

Amanda has 13 years practical experience with KPMG and PWC and worked with tax counsel on tax planning. She also worked as part of a Corporate finance team as the tax advisor for sales and purchases of companies/groups including listed groups.

Amanda has over 20 years’ experience in tax training and designs and writes the bespoke study manuals for the ADIT Energy Resources and Transfer Pricing papers as well as the classroom material for these papers.  She has also designed and written a lot of the classroom material for the ADIT paper 2.09 UK option and has reviewed the Paper 1 Principles of International Tax manual to ensure that it is syllabus focussed.

Amanda uses a lot of humour in her classroom courses and has a very practical approach to both the law and the exams.

Biography:

I am a senior tax consultant in Menzies Private Client team. My work involves a lot of international clients moving in and out of the UK, particularly from Europe, the US and Australia. The advice is from both an individual and employer context, advising on employer obligations plus the application of the remittance basis and overseas workday relief.

Another area I do a lot of work in is Inheritance tax and succession planning in general.

In addition to the normal array of OMB clients I work with a lot of people in the property sector, barristers and new tech start-ups.

Biography:

David is a former partner in, and consultant to Larking Gowen, based in East Anglia, specialising in agriculture and associated private client work. He is a founder member and past chairman of the ICAEW Farming and Rural Business Community and the group’s subject matter expert. Since retiring from practice David continues his involvement with agriculture, both as a speaker at training conferences and as a farmer in his own right.

Biography:

Thomas Außerlechner, certified public accountant and tax advisor, has been with PKF Österreicher & Partner GmbH & Co KG since 1995 and a partner since 2003. He specializes in special tax consulting (mergers & acquisitions, international tax law) and auditing of medium-sized companies and non-profit organizations, business valuation and special audits under corporate law.