Noel Flanagan

Noel has been in tax ‘all his life’ but fortunately it does not show. He joined the Inland Revenue [for his sins] in 1974 gaining invaluable experience in the workings [& non workings] of this least loved Government department. It took him 5 years to realise that he would rather be a defender than prosecutor and that the premise of being innocent until proved guilty was a much healthier system than that employed by the Revenue.

Between his escape in 1979 and 2003. Noel has worked with 2 small general accountancy practices during which time he has dealt with pretty much all aspects of direct taxation work ranging from accounts preparation an general tax compliance work through to handling complex tax enquiry and investigation work for a whole range of clients. He has also acted in a consultancy capacity for various other accountancy and financial practices. Throughout this time he has developed an excellent network of highly regarded and specialist tax professionals so if Noel does not know the answer, he’ll know a man [or woman!] that will.

The introduction of the Self Assessment tax system was heralded as a less complex system for the layman to understand but it did not take too long before the Revenue dropped the prefix ‘Simpler’ because simple it is not! He regularly comes across massive howlers and errors on the Revenue’s part; all of which would go undetected to the untrained eye. He says ‘If you would not put the fox in charge of the chickens – then why would you let the Revenue do you tax calculations’? Contrary to popular belief THEY DO NOT check the figures, they merely number crunch them. So do not expect them to tell you if you may have got something wrong!

When trying not to look like a tax accountant, Noel tries to look like a tennis player, a golfer or skier and sometimes succeeds.