Experienced hire

Transcript

I work in the Indirect Tax team, and specifically in the strategic growth markets, so for FTSE 250 clients rather than FTSE 100.  It’s really interesting; they tend to be smaller, so they’ve got smaller tax teams.  They tend to only have one or two tax members in their actual company; so it’s very interesting; they tend to rely on us a lot more.  They expect us to be a lot more integrated because as well as dealing with VAT, they also deal with corporate tax, they also deal with personal tax, so they want us to, if not know about them, to know when there might be an issue, and to contact the relevant people.  So it is a much more integrated approach; it’s very interesting.

There are a lot of weird and wonderful quirks with VAT.  I mean, for example, children’s clothing; generally zero-rated, but if it’s got fur on it, it might be standard-rated, but if it’s Mongolian goat’s fur it might be zero-rated, but if those Mongolian goats were bred in May, it might be standard-rated – it’s incredibly wacky. And I think one of the areas that really interests me is food.  Generally food is zero-rated: it goes back to kind of the War, and all these things like anything that was seen as a luxury were taxed under the standard rate of VAT.  So there are actually lots of weird and wonderful quirks in VAT that go back to the War. For example, cakes, because they were part of your ration, they are not seen as a luxury, so they are zero-rated; but then biscuits are standard-rated.  So there are all these weird and wonderful little quirks like that.

I am a Special Constable with the City of London Police, so that means that one evening a week I tend to get dressed up in full police uniform and go running around the streets of London looking for robbers, or going in a police van with blue flashing lights on, speeding round the streets of London.  It’s very interesting after a day’s work in the office trying to determine whether something has got fur, and therefore standard-rated, and it’s very interesting to have that different life.