Interview with Oliver Heslop, UK Tax Specialist

Oliver Heslop is a highly experienced UK tax specialist dealing with expatriate cross border issues and is the official Expat Focus UK Taxation partner. In this interview we learn more about Oliver's background and experience and the services he can offer to British expats abroad and foreign nationals in the UK.

Expat Focus: Oliver, can you tell us a bit about your background and how you came to join Shipleys?

Oliver Heslop

Oliver Heslop: I did my tax training with Andersens and spent my time mostly in expatriate tax work. I once had a 6 month secondment at Rolls-Royce in Derby looking after their international expatriate program. There were challenges in Jordan and Iran, believe me! Andersens also assigned me to Poland in 2002 and I learned my pidgin Polish by watching Eastenders with Polish subtitles.

After Andersens broke up, most of my career has been with Deloitte tax, but I have had a spell with Ernst & Young in Reading. At E&Y, my clients were very wide ranging - IT workers from India, UK aerospace engineers seconded all over the world, and board directors in media and telecoms. We managed secondments to every continent except Antarctica.

Expat Focus: What services does Shipleys offer and what is your own role?

Oliver Heslop: I am the lead partner in expatriate tax at Shipleys LLP based in London and other centres. Our firm has 21 partners and more than 150 employees. Shipleys are part of AGN International, an association of over 90 firms. This week, I have been working with AGN colleagues in the US, Hungary, Japan and Norway. We are growing the expatriate practice by supporting large multinationals, but also British nationals throughout the globe and foreign nationals all over the UK.

Shipleys LLP offer all of the traditional accounting services - Audit, Insolvency, Corporate and Personal Tax. However our business culture is not like others. Our approach is very personal. We strive to achieve an in-depth knowledge of the opportunities and problems faced by our clients, to understand the personalities, to identify the real needs. The most striking feature about Shipleys is the level of specialism. We have a private client practice that manages many household names, numerous experts in the film industry, and a large trusts team not available at any other accounting firm I know.

Expat Focus: What UK taxation issues do your expat clients typically encounter?

Oliver Heslop: We can always provide the standard services : tax returns, expatriate payrolls, certificates of coverage, tax equalisation calculations and tax planning for foreign nationals.

These are the typical areas that arise when we meet new clients. Ordinarily, I am approached by UK nationals working overseas, or about to leave to work abroad. They will ask about how to stop paying UK income tax if possible, and how their National Insurance will work. These clients often have a UK rental property, perhaps some stock options, and a personal or company pension. We can cover all of these matters.

The other typical client profile is a foreign national who has come to work in the UK for perhaps 6 months, 2 years or even 5 years. They have issues which affect every UK resident, but we also consider the special tax reliefs which may apply, the impact of being non-domiciled in the UK, when the UK can tax their overseas income and how PAYE and National Insurance works...

Read the rest of the interview at http://www.expatfocus.com/oliver-heslop-230710