One minute with Abigail McGregor, legal director in the contentious tax team at Pinsent Masons.
What’s keeping you busy at work?
I have a wonderfully varied workload, which I love. I spend a good portion of my day researching and writing about technical tax issues as part of my role as a practice development lawyer, but I also do interesting work with our clients on a wide range of topics, ranging from plastic packaging tax to the electricity generator levy and from national minimum wage to withholding tax. I also sit regularly as a judge in the First-tier Tribunal which I really enjoy – if you would like to know more about that, you can see a profile of my journey into it on the Judicial Appointments Commission website.
If you could make one change to tax, what would it be?
For many years, my answer to this question would have been the slab system of SDLT, but that has now been reformed. However, there remain elements of the tax system that distort behaviour in a similar way: for example, the peculiar very high marginal rates of income tax at certain thresholds and the impact on growing businesses of the VAT registration threshold. If I had a magic wand, I would banish policies that create anomalies in this way.
What do you know now that you wish you’d known at the start of your career?
That a career doesn’t have to be a straight line. A few years after qualifying, the obvious and expected route was to keep on going for the next promotion. With the benefit of hindsight, I am glad I took a more meandering path, following my passion for unpicking the law. Moving out of a law firm and into a technical role within a commercial organisation opened up experiences that would not have presented themselves at that point in my career in a law firm. It also gave me the space to feel that applying for a fee-paid judicial role was something that I could do. These varied inputs along the way have made me a better lawyer and (I hope!) a better team member. I don’t know what the rest of my career will hold, but I will focus more on growing my knowledge and experience than on the next rung of the ladder.
What is the best piece of work-related advice you have been given?
As a first-seat trainee in a corporate M&A department at Slaughter and May, I was given a research task by one of the partners in the team, who was renowned for being a tricky customer. My supervisor at the time said that he knew nothing whatsoever about the subject matter but that I should prepare answers not only to the question I had been asked, but to all the questions I might imagine she would ask when I presented my conclusions. It has stuck with me ever since and I have passed on the same advice to many others. My supervisor’s candour in admitting that he knew nothing about it has also stuck with me – better to admit you don’t know than to pretend you do and get it wrong!
What issues have clients been raising recently?
If I were to pick a theme for the disputes that have arisen recently, it would be circumstances where HMRC is taking a strong position based on a different view of the law, without any suggestion of avoidance and, in some cases, contrary to existing industry practice.
The other theme is the move towards pushing tax compliance onto large businesses in the supply chain. For example, the PPT regime pushes quite onerous obligations onto businesses within a supply chain who don’t have any primary responsibility for the tax: they are expected to monitor their suppliers and customers to make sure that they are paying the right amount of tax, with the potential risk of ending up responsible for it themselves. This is being introduced into our tax regime more frequently, e.g. online marketplace operators and IR35. In my view, it pushes compliance costs up for those who want to stay the right side of the line without necessarily improving overall compliance.
You might not know this about me but...
My favourite place to be is walking in the countryside with my husband and two sons, whatever the weather. My guilty pleasure is watching a good TV murder mystery, preferably with a glass of red in my hand.
One minute with Abigail McGregor, legal director in the contentious tax team at Pinsent Masons.
What’s keeping you busy at work?
I have a wonderfully varied workload, which I love. I spend a good portion of my day researching and writing about technical tax issues as part of my role as a practice development lawyer, but I also do interesting work with our clients on a wide range of topics, ranging from plastic packaging tax to the electricity generator levy and from national minimum wage to withholding tax. I also sit regularly as a judge in the First-tier Tribunal which I really enjoy – if you would like to know more about that, you can see a profile of my journey into it on the Judicial Appointments Commission website.
If you could make one change to tax, what would it be?
For many years, my answer to this question would have been the slab system of SDLT, but that has now been reformed. However, there remain elements of the tax system that distort behaviour in a similar way: for example, the peculiar very high marginal rates of income tax at certain thresholds and the impact on growing businesses of the VAT registration threshold. If I had a magic wand, I would banish policies that create anomalies in this way.
What do you know now that you wish you’d known at the start of your career?
That a career doesn’t have to be a straight line. A few years after qualifying, the obvious and expected route was to keep on going for the next promotion. With the benefit of hindsight, I am glad I took a more meandering path, following my passion for unpicking the law. Moving out of a law firm and into a technical role within a commercial organisation opened up experiences that would not have presented themselves at that point in my career in a law firm. It also gave me the space to feel that applying for a fee-paid judicial role was something that I could do. These varied inputs along the way have made me a better lawyer and (I hope!) a better team member. I don’t know what the rest of my career will hold, but I will focus more on growing my knowledge and experience than on the next rung of the ladder.
What is the best piece of work-related advice you have been given?
As a first-seat trainee in a corporate M&A department at Slaughter and May, I was given a research task by one of the partners in the team, who was renowned for being a tricky customer. My supervisor at the time said that he knew nothing whatsoever about the subject matter but that I should prepare answers not only to the question I had been asked, but to all the questions I might imagine she would ask when I presented my conclusions. It has stuck with me ever since and I have passed on the same advice to many others. My supervisor’s candour in admitting that he knew nothing about it has also stuck with me – better to admit you don’t know than to pretend you do and get it wrong!
What issues have clients been raising recently?
If I were to pick a theme for the disputes that have arisen recently, it would be circumstances where HMRC is taking a strong position based on a different view of the law, without any suggestion of avoidance and, in some cases, contrary to existing industry practice.
The other theme is the move towards pushing tax compliance onto large businesses in the supply chain. For example, the PPT regime pushes quite onerous obligations onto businesses within a supply chain who don’t have any primary responsibility for the tax: they are expected to monitor their suppliers and customers to make sure that they are paying the right amount of tax, with the potential risk of ending up responsible for it themselves. This is being introduced into our tax regime more frequently, e.g. online marketplace operators and IR35. In my view, it pushes compliance costs up for those who want to stay the right side of the line without necessarily improving overall compliance.
You might not know this about me but...
My favourite place to be is walking in the countryside with my husband and two sons, whatever the weather. My guilty pleasure is watching a good TV murder mystery, preferably with a glass of red in my hand.
