Sharon Cooke FCA CTA

Technical Director, 2020 Innovation Training Limited

Sharon joined 2020 Innovation as a Technical Director in January 2022 and works closely with Michael, Ian, Gordon and the rest of the 2020 team to build on the existing technical support provided to members.

Sharon is a Chartered Accountant and a Chartered Tax Adviser with over 15 years' experience supporting accountants in practice. Prior to joining 2020 she was London Director at Mercia and SWAT and started her career in practice with Bishop Fleming.

Georgina West (CTA)

Partner, Stamp Taxes Ernst & Young

Georgina is a specialist in all UK stamp taxes having both broad and deep experience across the various fields (SDLT, SDRT, LBTT, WTT and stamp duty). She is widely regarded as an expert in the following areas:

• Cross-border listings and cross-border settlement
• Schemes of Arrangement including COMI shifts
• Listing UK shares on overseas markets (such as NYSE and the NASDAQ)
• Inversions (particularly US inversions)

Peter Rayney CTA (Fellow), FCA, TEP

Peter Rayney Tax Consulting

Peter Rayney practices as an independent tax consultant. His main specialisms are corporate tax, company reorganisations, corporate finance tax (including company sales and acquisitions) SDLT, IHT and all aspects of owner managed business taxation.

Peter worked at BDO LLP for nearly 20 years, acting most recently as their National Tax Technical Partner.

He is a widely-recognised tax author and lecturer and regularly contributes to the professional press. He has now won Taxation's 'Tax Writer of the Year' award an unprecedented three times in 2002, 2014 and 2018.

Also, in 1994, Peter won the Chartered Institute of Taxation Fellowship Thesis prize for his thesis on "Selling companies for a deferred consideration (with particular reference to earn-outs)". The firm was also short-listed in the 'Tax Consultancy Firm Of The Year' at the 2014 Taxation Awards.

Peter is Immediate Past President of the Chartered Institute of Taxation and past chair of the ICAEW Tax Faculty'’'s Technical Committee.

Keith Gordon, FCA CTA (Fellow) Barrister

Temple Tax Chambers

Keith Gordon qualified as a chartered accountant and chartered tax adviser before retraining for the Bar. Since 2006, he has specialised in assisting taxpayers in disputes with HMRC and regularly attends courts and tribunals, ranging from the County Court to the Supreme Court.

Recent cases include representing Kaye Adams in her IR35 dispute in the case of Atholl House.

Between 1999 and 2002, Keith was a technical adviser employed by the Inland Revenue on the Tax Law Rewrite Project and, between 2005 and 2010, was the Chartered Institute of Taxation's representative on the TLRP's Consultative Committee. Between 2009 and 2019, Keith was a CIOT Council Member and remains an active member of various CIOT technical committees as well as of the ICAEW's Tax Technical and Oversight Committee.

Myrtle Lloyd

Director General for Customer Services, HMRC

During her 19 year Civil Service career, Myrtle has held a variety of leadership roles spanning strategy, programme/project delivery, operations and IT at both the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) and the Home Office. Before joining HM Revenue and Customs (HMRC) in 2021, she was Chief Operating Officer at Her Majesty's Passport Office, as well as Registrar General for England and Wales. While at the Home Office Myrtle was also the Head of Profession for operational delivery.

Myrtle was appointed as HMRC Director General for Customer Services in January 2021, taking up her role in February 2021.

Rebecca Benneyworth MBE BSc FCA

Rebecca is a Chartered Accountant in practice, but is best known as a lecturer and author on a variety of tax matters.

She was named Best Tax Lecturer at the Taxation awards in 2007, and is widely recognised for her down to earth, practical approach to tax issues.

She lectures for a wide range of training providers and professional firms and has delivered lectures for HMRC and HM Treasury on the impact of tax changes for smaller businesses.

She serves on the Administrative Burdens Advisory Board which challenges HMRC on the subject of business burdens, and is currently Chair of the Digital Advisory Group which is supporting HMRC in understanding the needs of small businesses and their professional advisers in the move to digital.

She has won a number of awards, including HMRC's External engagement award in 2011 and was awarded an MBE in the Queen's birthday honours list in 2012 for public service and services to the tax profession.

Moniza Syeda, BSc(Econ) Hons, ACA, PGCE (PCE)

LexisNexis

Moniza Syeda is a Chartered Accountant with many years' experience in expatriate and personal tax. She has worked for two of the Big4 firms in their expatriate tax departments, before running her own small practice. Currently, Moniza is a tax writer for Tolley's.

She is a member of the ICAEW's ET&NIC Committee and HMRC's Expat Forum. She also enjoys teaching at university and currently teaches for Tolley Exam Training.

Moniza is technical lead for Tolley's Global Mobility which looks at cross border employment and personal tax issues. Her main interest has always been expatriate taxation.

Robert Burton, MSc, CEDR

Ernst & Young LLP

Robert is a fully qualified former HMRC Tax Inspector; previously leading policy team implementing recent changes to 'agency' legislation tackling false self-employment. Also leading on the policy portfolio for IR35.

Robert's background covers a wide selection of finance and tax specialisms, including Income Tax, Corporate Tax and Compliance Investigations.

Robert Jamieson MA FCA CTA (Fellow) TEP

Mercer & Hole

Educated at Fettes and Pembroke College, Cambridge where he studied Moral Sciences, Robert joined what was then Cooper Brothers & Co and qualified as a chartered accountant in 1972. He subsequently moved to Financial Training where he ran their specialist tax course and tax consultancy divisions. He passed the ATII examination in 1979 and received his FTII (now CTA (Fellow)) in 1984 for a thesis on family companies.

After 20 years with Financial Training, Robert decided to return to full-time practice and became a partner in Adam Broke & Co in 1992. This firm merged with Mercer & Hole in 2001 where he continues to be a partner.

Outside his work, Robert joined the Council of the Chartered Institute of Taxation in 1993 and became their President in May 1999. He was on the Editorial Board of the weekly magazine "Taxation" for 21 years until 2011 and, in 2007, he joined the Editorial Board of "Simon's Taxes".

He contributed to Sweet & Maxwell's "Transactions: Group Company Structures" and "Tolley's Tax on Transactions" and he was the author of a Tax Digest for Accountancy Books on "Close Company Problems". He was also one of the original Series Editors for Croner's Tax Handbooks. In 2006, he wrote a Tolley's Tax Digest on "Optimising Taper Relief" as well as producing Tax Digests for four recent Finance Acts. Another piece of written work is his chapter in "Tolley's Tax Planning 2007/08".

Robert is an occasional commentator on private client tax matters for Legal Network Television. In May 2008, he chaired and co-presented one of LexisNexis' inaugural webinars entitled "Topical Capital Gains Tax Issues".