WHO I HELP

Family businesses. SMEs. Large companies with international links.

HOW I HELP

Personal taxes; both income and capital. Audit and accounting services. Tax services, including corporate tax.

SECTORS/SUPPORT

Technology. Leisure, retail and hospitality., Property & construction. Engineering.

“I DON’T JUST FOLLOW FORMAL CONVENTION; I ALWAYS TRY TO THINK OUTSIDE THE BOX.”

It’s safe to say that Paddy Harty, a Private Client Partner based in our Newry office, has a wealth of extensive experience.

With a long and varied career, Paddy manages to be both a generalist and a specialist. He has had various roles through his decades-long career, and still does some accounting, auditing and consulting. This breadth of experience gives him an incredible foundation of knowledge across departments, as well as keen, deep knowledge in his area of Private Client work.

Paddy has a portfolio of clients that he looks after, of varying sizes from across the island of Ireland. He looks after client relationships, helping clients deal with anything from accounting to corporate tax, income tax, inheritance and capital gains tax.

THE FIRST PORT OF CALL

“You know you’ve got a good relationship with a client based on deep, genuine trust, when they come to you for advice when it comes to any issue or question in their life that is in any way money related. Whether it’s a mortgage issue, a tax problem, or a business problem – it’s great to be the first port of call for people; the first person they phone, text or email regarding these things.”

BEING RESPONSIVE & AVAILABLE

“Clients, of course, expect a high-quality service and they expect this in a timely way, and at a reasonable price. The main thing I always ensure for my clients is that I’m responsive and available – I make sure that I’m always at the other end of the phone and that I reply to their emails as quickly as I can. I never leave my clients hanging or waiting too long for a response.”

ACHIEVING THE DESIRED OUTCOME

“The most satisfying thing about working with clients is when you give them some advice and then you see them implement that and it achieves the desired outcome. For example, if they are thinking of selling their business and you warn them of the post-sale inheritance tax problem and advise them to form a trust and put share into the trust. Then seven years later their estates are considerably smaller, and they’ve saved a significant amount on inheritance tax – the client can see the tangible impact of their family wealth that your advice has made.”

BEING ABLE TO HELP & COLLABORATE WITH EACH OTHER

“When it comes to working with colleagues, the most satisfying aspect of working with colleagues is being able to help colleagues who have a tax problem when they have limited tax knowledge. Equally, if I have an audit issue that I don’t really know the answer to, I know there are plenty of audit specialists who I am able to turn to and collaborate with, for the benefit of the client.

Whatever the problem is, there is always someone on the team or someone in a different department that will know the answer.”

EXPLORING BETTER WAYS OF DOING THINGS

“One of my strengths is my approach to problem-solving: I always try and think outside the box, and not necessarily just follow the formal convention of sorting things out. There are plenty of more innovative solutions, and sometimes all it takes is challenging traditional ways of doing things to find a novel solution. If you can do that, and then draw upon your knowledge and collaborate with others wherever helpful, then you can often establish a better way.”

REVOLUTIONISED COMMUNICATION

“One effect of the pandemic is that it revolutionised how we communicate with clients. It’s obviously worthwhile to strike a balance between being on-site with clients as well as utilising virtual ways of communicating, as being in person still has so many benefits. But it’s hard to overstate how much technology and virtual communication have changed things in our area of work. The efficiency it allows saves us so much time, and lets our clients feel more able to reach out about small questions, queries, or issues, since the time and costs of travelling don’t have to be something they worry about. It really helps to get things moving.”

LIFELONG LEARNING

“The greatest challenge of working in tax is keeping up to date with all the latest legislative changes. With tax taxes changing occurring even weekly some of the time, I try to read up about it as much as possible on a weekly basis. I’m always looking out for updates, and ensuring my knowledge is current.

I’m a firm believer in lifelong learning, and that every day is a school day!”

MOVING FORWARD AS ONE TEAM, ACROSS DIFFERENT LOCATIONS

“I am always seeing improvements that have been made to the business. It’s brilliant to watch and to be a part of our rapid development in so many ways, particularly in relation to technology. We really are all one team of people, albeit in different locations. It’s also very exciting to see the next generation of innovative, passionate partners coming through.”

OFFERING A COMPLETE, ROUNDED SERVICE

“Of the six core Group Values, ‘Collaboration is our superpower’ is the one that jumps out to me the most. If you get a client referral from a colleague, it’s easy to win that client’s trust because they already know they can trust AAB Group. It’s a fantastic thing to be able to offer a complete, rounded professional service in all aspects of finance under one roof, so to speak.”

EXTENSIVE DEPTH & BREADTH OF EXPERIENCE

“At this stage in my career, the greatest strength I bring to AAB is my extensive experience. I regularly shave hours off of some of my colleagues’ days, simply because I can help them in the middle of assignments or at the start of assignments that the planning stage, and divert them away from dead ends or wasting their time on certain things, or provide more efficient methods of doing things. And because I’ve worked in most of our departments in one way or another, I have good, broad, general knowledge as well as specialist knowledge, which is extremely useful.”

IT’S ALL ABOUT RELATIONSHIPS

“I think there’s a common misconception about our profession that it’s a little drab or boring – but it’s the opposite. It’s an incredibly exciting area to work in. We get to help people make business decisions in real-time. And it’s as much – if not more – about the people you work with, and the relationships you build. And people are anything but boring! People are interesting, and the fact that we get to help them in a significant, often life-changing way, is fantastic.

I also love that we tend to be with our clients for most of their working life, and then quite often we get to work with their children too. Having those relationships and the way we get to help people is far from boring in my opinion.”