How did you end up in tax?
When I went to university I always knew I was going to end up in business and that accountancy was the best qualification for business. While at Oxford I signed up for the Arthur Andersen summer vacation programme which included stints in audit and tax. I preferred tax because it required you to understand the business rationale rather than becoming an expert in each area one at a time.
Who in tax do you most admire?
There’s Jean Baptiste Colbert the practical policy adviser to Louis XIV – the famous quote about plucking the goose with the least amount of hissing may not be what we aspire to now but shows some appreciation of the practical world in which policy decisions need to be made. But if I was forced to look to someone who...
