Charlotte Barbour Presidential Outgoing Speech

Charlotte's incoming speech as President, given in May 2024, can be read here

Hello.

It has been an honour and a privilege to have been the President of the Chartered Institute of Taxation over the last year. It has also been most enjoyable. In large part that’s because so many people – members, volunteers and staff – are actively involved and working hard to make our Institute what it is.

So, let me start by paying tribute to all of those who actively support the CIOT, our activities and our members. In particular, our branch committees which perform such an important role in organising events, bringing members together for networking and professional development.

I’d also like to thank my fellow Council members. We are most fortunate in having an active, purposeful Council to oversee our activities – our debates are robust and constructive, and our decisions are better for it. As well as ‘business as usual’ matters we’ve considered topics like the CTA Review and the value of CFE membership. I have very much enjoyed chairing our Council over the year.

Council members also sit on the Institute’s standing committees and in particular I’d like to thank three chairs who are standing down - Penny Tuck, Sarah Hewson and Jonathan Riley for chairing the Nominations, Membership and Branches, and Finance Committees. Thank you. And I shall miss Penny as she steps down from the Council after 6 years of service; I shall also miss the wise counsel of Kriss Mikata-Pralat who has been our lay adviser, when his term ends in July.  

As the Institute has grown, in membership and activities, so the role and work of our staff has grown. I’d like to thank Helen Whiteman and her senior team for their leadership in this. They are fantastic and we are most fortunate to have their services.

A number of new staff joined Helen’s team during 2024, including Vicky Purtill (Director of Education) and Vicky Hilpert (Chief Finance Officer) – and I’ve been very pleased to work with them. Thank you too to Andrew Burnett who was Chief Operating Officer over the year until his departure this February.

This time last year I spoke about how central our qualifications are to what we do. In particular we need to ensure the CTA remains an attractive proposition, maintains standards, and meets the needs of today’s students and employers. So we have begun a review and launched a consultation which I invite all of you to consider contributing to, whether you are a member, student or employer. Thank you to all who have been working so hard on this over the year.

Associated work is also being done to ensure the relevance of the Joint Programme of CTA /ACA as both the CIOT and the ICAEW change their syllabus. Similar work will be undertaken in due course on the ADIT qualification – our Advanced Diploma in International Taxation.

As I look back over the year there have been a number of themes running though our work:

First, there was the general election. The Institute’s external relations and technical teams pulled out all the stops to produce some excellent ‘explainers’.

Topical matters such as VAT on school fees, and the corporate tax roadmap, were carefully examined in our debates held with the IFS. And we also used the election period to draw attention to key tax administration issues such as the need for simplification and a more thoughtful approach to digitalisation. This included an article I wrote for the Financial Times, and letters to party spokespeople, which in turn led to post-election conversations.

Second, we have maintained the focus on AI in tax with –

• a wide offering of member-facing discussions such as the Tax Technology podcasts and at last year’s Cambridge conference;
• our Diploma in Tax Technology and new short course in AI for tax;
• enhanced CPD offerings;
• and the forthcoming Tax Technology Conference on 4 June.

I’m pleased that the Institute has been able to give such strong support to members in this crucial area – AI in tax needs to be understood and the appropriate tools well utilised if we are to maximise its benefits in our practices and work.

Third, for a number of years there have been serious concerns about the service standards offered by HMRC to both taxpayers and advisers.  We have continued to press for improvements. Last year, to establish what is causing the problems, CIOT, along with ICAEW, conducted a major research project, seeking to answer the question: why is it that we are contacting HMRC?

I’m most grateful to the 31 firms that took the time and trouble to log every interaction they had with HMRC over a 6 week period. I can commend the output from this work, a report, ‘Tackling HMRC’s customer service challenge’, making 10 practical recommendations.

And in March, James Murray, the Exchequer Secretary to the Treasury, told us that he would be introducing an escalation route for agents for slow moving Self Assessment and PAYE queries – something that directly addressed one of our report’s recommendations.

That an announcement was made, incidentally, in his speech at a joint CIOT-ICAEW conference to mark 20 years since the Inland Revenue and Customs and Excise were merged. And what a great conference that was, bringing together practitioners and senior policy-makers past and present to reflect on HMRC’s past and chart a course for its future.

Fourth, ‘Raising Standards in the tax market’ continues as an important strand of our work in response to HMRC concerns about standards and the tax gap. This time last year, we responded to HMRC’s consultation; we have since had the Budget announcement that agents will need to register with HMRC; and further consultation is expected imminently. Our professional standards team and committee direct this work – my  thanks to Jane Mellor and her team for their careful, diligent work in this area, along with conducting AML supervision.

So there’s been a lot going on. Being so actively involved in Institute activities over the last year reminds me not only of the range of functions and activities we carry out but also just how important our professional bodies are. I’ve always known this – its why I first became actively involved in CIOT matters – but being President reinforces this.

The CIOT acts in the public interest, on all our behalves:

• Ingathering our experience to inform tax policy making and to improve tax administration;
• Maintaining our standards and the quality of our work, through CPD and our trusted qualifications;
• Informing and educating the public about tax, including the work of LITRG;
• And, in short, ‘keeping our badge shiny’. 

I‘d also like to put in a word of praise at this point for the excellent work the tax advice charities – Tax Aid and TaxHelp for Older People – do, which the CIOT supports wholeheartedly.

Let me conclude by saying that I strongly believe that membership of the CIOT provides a great starting point for the skills and knowledge advisers need, with our qualifications and, thereafter, support with ongoing lifelong learning, through branch events, webinars and other activity.

Our professional bodies are an important part of our professionalism – and it has been a huge privilege to be President of the CIOT.

Can I also thank each and every one of you for supporting our Institute.

Last but not least – let me hand the President’s badge to Nichola Ross–Martin who I have had the good fortune to work with on Council over the last few years. I’m delighted she is now to be our President.

Nichola – over to you.