One minute with Tania Dimitrovich, Partner at Armstrong Watson.
You left a Big Four firm to build Armstrong Watson’s Manchester corporate tax presence from scratch. What did you underestimate, and what did you get right?
I was right that I wanted to be a genuinely generalist corporate tax adviser again – someone who can sit across a table from a business owner in Manchester and talk through what’s actually on their mind, without navigating a chain of internal referrals. Building a local practice around local clients feels far more natural.
What I underestimated was how much thought it takes to grow the team in the right way. There’s sometimes an assumption that, once you’re established in Manchester, the next stage of growth just happens on its own. It doesn’t – you have to be quite deliberate about the kind of people you bring in, because the role here is genuinely wide-ranging. With a regional client base, the breadth of knowledge expected is wider than anything I’d had to maintain in the Big Four. It’s hugely enjoyable, but definitely humbling.
What do you know now that you wish you’d known at the start of your career?
That being technically strong is only half the job, and may not be the most important half. I spent far too long thinking that if I just learned more legislation, more case law, more HMRC manuals, then everything else would fall into place. In reality, soft skills – and ‘soft’ does not mean ‘easy’ – matter right from the start: how you explain something; how you build trust; how you develop and support your team. I would have benefited from understanding that long before I could quote the Senior Accounting Office guidance with embarrassing precision.
If you could make one change to a tax law or practice, what would it be?
I’d expand the eligibility criteria for tax-advantaged share schemes so that subsidiaries can grant options directly. In the real world, many private companies create value through a trading subsidiary, while the holding company may simply own non-trade assets such as property. The owners may want to focus on incentivising the trade without diluting ownership of non-trade assets.
The choice often becomes: either undertake a demerger, or abandon tax-advantaged options and turn to other options such as growth shares. Whilst growth shares can work well, they involve issuing actual shares, rather than options, usually with an upfront cost to employees. It’s difficult to explain to a business trying to incentivise loyal staff that the scheme designed to reward them has just made things more complicated and less beneficial. A small, well targeted legislative change would make a meaningful difference to real businesses.
What recent development is changing how you advise clients?
Inheritance tax changes have had the biggest day-to-day impact in the last 12 months. They’re reshaping how owner-managers think about succession planning, business continuity and, interestingly, their pension strategy. Several clients have said that they now feel penalised for doing exactly what previous policy encouraged: building up pensions as a long-term, sensible asset.
The uncertainty means conversations are happening earlier, and they’re broader. Clients want to understand how their business, family wealth and retirement planning fit together under the new landscape – and they’re looking for pragmatic, emotionally aware advice, with the ability to change course if there are yet more changes in the pipeline. It’s made the advisory role more nuanced, which I enjoy, but it’s definitely a shift.
Finally, you might not know this about me but…
I am very, very slowly learning Arabic on Duolingo. I like diving and often end up in the Red Sea, and it would be nice to understand at least the basics, rather than relying entirely on everyone else speaking English. Progress is modest, but I can now order water with confidence – which, for a diver, is arguably the most practical place to start.
One minute with Tania Dimitrovich, Partner at Armstrong Watson.
You left a Big Four firm to build Armstrong Watson’s Manchester corporate tax presence from scratch. What did you underestimate, and what did you get right?
I was right that I wanted to be a genuinely generalist corporate tax adviser again – someone who can sit across a table from a business owner in Manchester and talk through what’s actually on their mind, without navigating a chain of internal referrals. Building a local practice around local clients feels far more natural.
What I underestimated was how much thought it takes to grow the team in the right way. There’s sometimes an assumption that, once you’re established in Manchester, the next stage of growth just happens on its own. It doesn’t – you have to be quite deliberate about the kind of people you bring in, because the role here is genuinely wide-ranging. With a regional client base, the breadth of knowledge expected is wider than anything I’d had to maintain in the Big Four. It’s hugely enjoyable, but definitely humbling.
What do you know now that you wish you’d known at the start of your career?
That being technically strong is only half the job, and may not be the most important half. I spent far too long thinking that if I just learned more legislation, more case law, more HMRC manuals, then everything else would fall into place. In reality, soft skills – and ‘soft’ does not mean ‘easy’ – matter right from the start: how you explain something; how you build trust; how you develop and support your team. I would have benefited from understanding that long before I could quote the Senior Accounting Office guidance with embarrassing precision.
If you could make one change to a tax law or practice, what would it be?
I’d expand the eligibility criteria for tax-advantaged share schemes so that subsidiaries can grant options directly. In the real world, many private companies create value through a trading subsidiary, while the holding company may simply own non-trade assets such as property. The owners may want to focus on incentivising the trade without diluting ownership of non-trade assets.
The choice often becomes: either undertake a demerger, or abandon tax-advantaged options and turn to other options such as growth shares. Whilst growth shares can work well, they involve issuing actual shares, rather than options, usually with an upfront cost to employees. It’s difficult to explain to a business trying to incentivise loyal staff that the scheme designed to reward them has just made things more complicated and less beneficial. A small, well targeted legislative change would make a meaningful difference to real businesses.
What recent development is changing how you advise clients?
Inheritance tax changes have had the biggest day-to-day impact in the last 12 months. They’re reshaping how owner-managers think about succession planning, business continuity and, interestingly, their pension strategy. Several clients have said that they now feel penalised for doing exactly what previous policy encouraged: building up pensions as a long-term, sensible asset.
The uncertainty means conversations are happening earlier, and they’re broader. Clients want to understand how their business, family wealth and retirement planning fit together under the new landscape – and they’re looking for pragmatic, emotionally aware advice, with the ability to change course if there are yet more changes in the pipeline. It’s made the advisory role more nuanced, which I enjoy, but it’s definitely a shift.
Finally, you might not know this about me but…
I am very, very slowly learning Arabic on Duolingo. I like diving and often end up in the Red Sea, and it would be nice to understand at least the basics, rather than relying entirely on everyone else speaking English. Progress is modest, but I can now order water with confidence – which, for a diver, is arguably the most practical place to start.
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