Pippa
Powell

HOW I HELP

Compliance services for accounts, corporation tax and VAT. Personal tax income planning.

WHO I HELP

Family Investment Companies. Owner Managed Businesses. SMEs. Property Investment Companies.

SECTORS/SUPPORT

Property. FICs. Consultancy. Retail. Manufacturing.

“I’M COMMITTED TO HELPING MY CLIENTS ACHIEVE THEIR GOALS.”

Pippa Powell is a Senior Manager in our Business Advisory team. She specialises in managing the preparation of accounts, tax returns and VAT returns. Pippa also oversees assistants with bookkeeping for some of her clients. She is CTA qualified and so occasionally assists the tax team with special advisory work particularly in relation to capital allowances.

WHAT CLIENTS CAN EXPECT

“I think clients expect me to be organised and provide work in a timely manner; to be proactive and flag any potential tax liabilities or savings; and to support them achieve their goals and reassure them that they are in safe hands. For clients, I hope they feel comfortable contacting me with any queries or concerns they might have.”

HELPING PEOPLE UNDERSTAND & GROW

“I enjoy helping clients whether it simply be helping them understand their management information or advising them on a company restructure to allow them to retire. And I enjoy communicating with my colleagues to work as a team to get jobs done. I really like helping assistants grow and learn from a technical point of view but also encouraging them to deal directly with clients. I have provided corporate tax and remuneration planning training to seniors in the past and received good feedback on the sessions.”

EMBRACING TECHNOLOGY BUT FINDING BALANCE

“I understand that technology is the way forward to becoming efficient. It has really come into its own during the pandemic and pushed me to use things like reviewing accounts files on screen and Teams meetings. Some clients who live a distance from Leeds still like to have Teams meetings but we’re finding more clients prefer to travel for face-to-face meetings – I have even had clients travel from Australia, France and Guernsey recently.”

A FAST-MOVING AREA

“The greatest challenge we are encountering within FICs at the moment is ensuring there are enough people with a working knowledge of them to be able to prepare the accounts and tax and ultimately move on to have the client relationship and managing role.

It is a fast-growing area, and we are constantly being referred more from investment managers as they realise that we specialise in this area. I am working together with my other colleagues who work with FICs and the overall BAG team to ensure that we have sufficient capacity to service these types of clients to the best of our ability.”

SHARING MY KNOWLEDGE

“The most exciting thing for me about the future for me and for AAB, is the ability to use specialist teams across the group to assist my clients to get the best advice, for example with VAT, CIS and R&D. For me I’m hoping I can spread my knowledge of FICs and maybe move more towards tax advice again.”

PERSONABILITY

“I think the greatest strength I bring to AAB is that I am personable. I like to get to know the client so I can talk about their interests and family outside of work as well as discussing the accounts or tax. I am also very organised and efficient in my work.”

CLIENT FEEDBACK

“I have been described by clients as “helpful and supportive” and “extremely good to work with.” One of the greatest compliments I’ve received from a client was that my help was “worth every penny.” Another was that I provided “personal, friendly service” and that I allowed the client “to ask simple questions repeatedly without causing [them] embarrassment.””