The ICAS Tax Team
ICAS has an exceptionally strong tax team with diverse skills and experience, dispersed around the UK to provide optimum access to ICAS members and tax authorities.
What does the team do?
Key objectives include the delivery of tax support and representation to members, and policy work and liaison with the tax authorities.
Fundamental components of this include:
- influencing and improving the technical (as distinct from the party political) content of tax legislation through proactive submissions and responses to consultations;
- liaison with HMRC on practical issues and problems with HMRC systems;
- suggesting strategic tax changes (for example, through letters to the Financial Secretary to the Treasury);
- representing ICAS at government forums and meetings to ensure that members’ views on tax are heard;
- presenting Current Tax and the ICAS Spring Tax Updates in Scotland and London.
Responses to technical consultations from the Treasury, HMRC, the Office of Tax Simplification and other bodies reflect the views of ICAS committees and individual members. The team reviews draft tax legislation, tracking changes to it during its passage through Parliament and seeking to ensure that it works effectively. ICAS Tax Staff hold meetings with appropriate Treasury officials and the tax authorities on policy and operational matters and submit written and oral evidence to Parliamentary inquiries.
Devolution has added a new element to UK tax law and practice in recent years. ICAS is uniquely placed to participate in the new processes and works closely in Edinburgh with the Scottish Parliament’s Finance and Constitution Committee, the Scottish Government and Revenue Scotland.
ICAS represents members of all political persuasions and has a public interest remit to act for the wider public good. It therefore avoids taking any party political stance but seeks to engage with politicians of all parties where this is likely to facilitate improvements in tax law or in the operation of the tax system.
Charlotte Barbour, Director of Tax
Charlotte leads the tax team and is based at CA House in Edinburgh but travels extensively – attending key meetings in London and elsewhere in the UK, giving evidence to UK and Scottish parliamentary committees and representing ICAS from time to time in Brussels and at other locations overseas. She works closely with the ICAS Tax Board to set the direction for ICAS tax policy and to develop the ICAS Tax Policy Positions and is secretary to the Indirect Taxes Committee. She also represents ICAS at several forums for tax professional bodies (such as the cross profession Professional Conduct in Relation to Taxation group) and works to develop and maintain relationships with other institutes and the Office of Tax Simplification (OTS). With Philip she runs the Spring Tax Updates in locations around Scotland.
Susan Cattell, Head of Tax Technical Policy
Susan is secretary to the International and Large Business Tax Committee and the Private Client Committee - and she also works with the Indirect Tax Committee. Based in the south east, she is ideally located to meet with Treasury and HMRC officials in London and represents ICAS on various HMRC groups (including the Compliance Reform Forum and the Joint VAT Consultative Committee) and at ad hoc meetings to discuss consultations or other specific issues. She works with Charlotte in liaising with the OTS and with other professional bodies. She presents the London Spring Tax Update and writes articles on tax technical issues for the ICAS website.
Philip McNeill, Head of Taxation (Tax Practice and Owner Managed Business Taxes)
Philip is based in rural Dumfriesshire and is secretary to the Owner Managed Business Tax Committee. He works on tax issues that affect small and medium sized tax practitioners and their clients - and SMEs. Recent work has included helping members and their clients dealing with Making Tax Digital for VAT – including a series of helpful articles on ICAS.com. He is also involved in work with HMRC on improving the way HMRC interacts with agents. With Charlotte he runs the Spring Tax Updates in locations around Scotland and also presents at ICAS Conferences.
Justine Riccomini, Head of Taxation (Scottish Taxes, Employment and ICAS Tax Community)
Justine is based in West Yorkshire and is secretary to the Scottish Taxes Committee and the Employment Tax Working Group. She leads on matters relating to devolution and employment taxes. She represents ICAS at several HMRC and industry forums (including HMRC’s Employment and Payroll Group and the Association of Accounting Technicians’ employment and pensions panel) and is a member of the Scottish Tax Policy Forum (a collaboration between ICAS and the CIOT). She also coordinates the monthly CA Tax email sent to the ICAS Tax community and writes articles for the ICAS website and for various tax journals.
If you have any queries or would like to contact the ICAS Tax team then please get in touch.