The Wise Why

Jonathan Reeves
Well, I’m Jonathan Reeves and I run a firm called Tax Matters and. We’re not just like every other accountancy firm, we specialise in tax. We’re like, really talking about that because everyone is affected by tax and hence why my wife chose the wonderful name tax matters all those years ago when I decided to go on my own, which was back in 2008. So yeah, it’s all about tax and that’s why we’re called. Act matters.

Kirsty van den Bulk
So I know that a lot of people, including myself, I mean, thankfully I’m not too bad at tax, but there is that moment where you’ve launched a business or your business is expanding and you’re going from personal allowance to business allowance and corporation tax and it all becomes a minefield of absolute. Overwhelmed. I’m wondering if you could just give a little bit of advice to either a new business owner or somebody who is maybe struggling. What would you say to them? About if if somebody came in Tulip, like me and came. And went ohh don’t. Know who I am. Here’s a box of receipts. What would you say?

Jonathan Reeves
Well, that’s great. I mean, if you’re gonna earn if I think it depends on how much you’re going to earn or what you imagine you’re going to earn. So let’s say you’re gonna earn £30,000 a year. That’s great. A bag of receipts is not too bad. There’s loads of like technical apps and stuff you can use like decks. We can take pictures of your seats and you can get. QuickBooks and Zero are great platforms to use your bookkeeping, and if you can do that, that’s great. If you can do it yourself, then I’d really. Recommend it if you want a professional to do it then remember that’s gonna cost you and that’s gonna be additional. And if you’re earning 30,000 LB, do you really want to be paying that to a professional person? Because that’s gonna be that’s your profits. You’re eroding away. So that at that point it may just be easier for you to have a bag of receipts and then hand them over. You might find that it’s cheaper because you haven’t got a monthly subscription. To deal with, but if you’re gonna, if you think you’re gonna earn more, there’s lots of things you gotta start. Thinking about. You got to think about if you’re gonna hit the VAT limit and that’s recently gone up from 85,000 to £90,000 and that might like seem like a big big amounts of money. But that’s based on your last 12 months of trading, which is very different to your business accounts, which is based on your financial year. So if you have a financial year that ends 31st of March, then that’s that’s for your tax and that just looks at that year where your VAT moves every month. So you gotta keep an eye on what? You’re turning over, so if you’re gonna approach like 90,000 amount then you need to think about being VAT registered. And I always say, if you’re going to be VAT registered, why don’t you just form the limited company at the same time? It’s all done. It’s all packaged into the same parcel and you’ve got everything done. And by that time, if you’re VAT registered, you need to use one of these online portal softwares like 0 or QuickBooks. We always recommend. Zero. It’s our favourite tax. Matters. But yeah, I mean running a limited company is so much better because you can draw down your profits in dividends, which are tax more effectively than paying personal tax. But if you’re paying tax as a sole trader, there’s been some real good changes to National Insurance in the minute class twos disappearing next year. And we’ve seen some cuts in the. Rate as well. So there are benefits there, and hopefully they’re gonna come through. We have seen dividend rates go up over recent years, but you know. Everyone’s different and you, you need to take an approach. What doesn’t work for some might work for others, but I think VAT is the big thing for business, which always catches them out because either they decide they don’t want to be BH bridges and therefore to keep an eye on keeping below that threshold, or they decide they want to break through it and then they need to really push hard to make it benefit. Initial for on the other side, yeah, that’s my advice for a new business. Think about the VAT.

Kirsty van den Bulk
That was brilliant. That was so clear, so succinct and just really calmly said. Can I just do that to you? Because I know that there are points where I look at my tax accounts. And I go. Oh no, I use a software that’s associated with my bank. I’m not going to say that. Online because hey.

Jonathan Reeves
I which one that is?

Kirsty van den Bulk
You know. Yeah. I’m not going to say. And and it was recommended to me and I went out networking, which I’m gonna come onto in a minute. Because, you know, we met on LinkedIn, and of course that’s networking. But I’m wondering because obviously we’re we’re in the same area and yet we’ve never met face to face.

Jonathan Reeves
No, we haven’t. They changed that, but they normally.

Kirsty van den Bulk
So I’m wondering. Sorry.

Jonathan Reeves
We’re going to change that soon, aren’t we?

Kirsty van den Bulk
Are going to change that. So I’m just wondering about you. I go out networking and there’s always an accountant in. The room why does? Somebody choose one accountant. I don’t know. This is a really loaded question, but how does somebody? Why would somebody choose you over somebody else that’s in the room? What would it be that they would drive to come to you? I know.

Kirsty van den Bulk
That’s in the morning, Mike.

Jonathan Reeves
That’s a really tough question.

Jonathan Reeves
As networkers, we all use that phrase don’t with that like meet and trust. But I think that’s really true, isn’t it? I mean you you do want to people. If I think about people I’ve.

Jonathan Reeves
Carried on doing business with throughout my networking career. Then it’s always been based on that who you like. You know what? So what does surprise me though? Kirsty is. You meet people at networking events by 6-7 years ago that you never hear from and suddenly they they ping you a message and saying can you help me? And it’s like what’s that? Well, you know how. You must have done something in the room that’s left such an impression that they didn’t need you, but like six or seven years ago or they they, they need you now, you know? Yeah. What’s that about? I mean, yeah, there there’s loads of there’s loads of people who do tax. They can to see. And I think you gotta find the right person that suits your business. And it’s a little bit like when you start a game. So if you’ve just got a small lifestyle business, then you might really work well with just the person in the room who’s themselves is a lifestyle bookkeeper type account, and that might work really well for you. But if you’ve got more of a bigger business, then you’re gonna need a large. A firm that looks at all different types of taxes and then if you’ve just got a tax issue, then you need someone more like myself who can really help you with with the personal tax, because that’s really my passion is is the personal tax to how that affects people. Although businesses come into that quite a lot. It’s everybody, every single person. To me, as my friends always told me, when we’re networking is every person in this room needs to speak to you because they’ve got a tax issue today, tomorrow or somewhere in the. Yeah.

Kirsty van den Bulk
So can we touch a little bit on the difference because we talked about business tax, can we talk a little bit about personal tax and where your strengths are in that because you know as you said everybody at some point you know I can think about my neighbour, couple of houses away.

Kirsty van den Bulk
Streets away suddenly received a tax bill because they’ve made a mistake. And that tax bill was huge, and it came out of nowhere, and the systems changed, so they can’t go online. And this was before the system went online. Ohh my goodness. And they would need you. So I’m just wondering if you touch a little bit about the complexities of personal not obviously in depth, but a little bit of why some, why you would help someone.

Jonathan Reeves
That is such a big question that is so. I think 1. Of the problems at the minute is people find it really difficult to talk to HMRC. OK, you can call and it can take literally hours and I know people on LinkedIn will post. It takes five hours. But seriously, I mean this week alone I had one call that took an hour and 15 minutes. Them to answer. OK and that’s we have dedicated lines. Do that now. They were also on about in the beginning of the month. They were on about closing the lines from April to September and they quickly had to make a U-turn on that and said they weren’t going to do that. So a lot of the problems like people want to address their personal tax issues, but find it very difficult to talk to HMRC and the issues arise from so. Many places. So a person who’s on PAYG income may certainly find that they go over the 100,000 threshold and they need to prepare a tax return to report that. OK, their code they coding notice may change from their usual 125 code to a key code and they suddenly. Start losing money in their packs. Pay back it every month. Now. That could be a result of they got a bonus all of a sudden. It may. Usually the bonuses go out in Christmas time, so January they get a change of coding and suddenly realise they haven’t got any pay. So people go into panic. OK, other things that happen to people are. Pension contributions. They make pension contributions, which means they can get tax relief on that. They need to report that in the tax return so they can get. App, they have underpayments so they have tax liabilities from previous tax years at HMRC pickup up and then they put them in their coding notices, they send code notices to clients. Clients don’t generally understand what the coding notice means and then they get a massive shock at the end of the month when suddenly their pay drops. Where else can we go? There are people who have trusts. OK, now trusts are a big thing out there. There’s more trust around than you realise. And although the trust has itself has to do a personal tax return, OK, and most accountants don’t know how to do those, they usually are left to tax advisors like myself to deal with. But the beneficiaries of the trusts also have to do tax returns if they receive income, because the beneficiary may be due as tax refunds. A loss of beneficiaries of trusts are young children. OK, so the parents don’t want them to do tax returns. So then we would advise them the trust not to distribute any income to the children. But what it’s really complicated is when the trusts are distributing income to the beneficiaries, but the child may be 18 or 19. So they may be getting a couple of 1000. Pounds from the trust. OK. Which is tax refundable? But suddenly they go to the university and they start getting barred jobs and part time jobs, and then their code becomes distorted. There’s a lot of issues there. All these problems can blow up and affect people in a much bigger way. Then you appreciate, but also it’s worth mentioning I think is buy to let property at the minute because lots of people have buy to let property and they have them, they own them personally and interest relief on that was taken away a couple of years ago. So and now with mortgage rates going up, people are really feeling the sting. And they’re not. You know, that some people feel they’re paying more tax, and they’re actually getting. In their pocket. So they’re starting to sell the properties and they’re subject to capital gains tax and the capital gain tax rules changed in the last budget. So they went from 28% for higher rate to 24%. So this year we are imagining there’s going to be a surge of people disposing of those properties. If you set a buy to that property or any second property that you own, it’s it has tax to pay on it and you have to report and pay that to HMRC within 60 days. What else is their inheritance tax? People have inheritance tax planning issues is not just going to your solicitor and we distribute the proceeds of the world. There’s planning to be done beforehand. How much money you got? Where’s it gonna go? What’s tax efficient? Yeah, a lot. A lot of tax stuff it is about. All the planning, it’s just. Not doing a tax return is what we call compliance, and that’s the stuff that you have to do. But the interesting stuff is how you save the tax, not how you avoid it. We’re not. We’re not trying to do anything illegal here. We’re just trying to make work with inside the rules. So you pay the right tax at the right time, and if it’s a sideways step that we can point you in. Then we’ll point you that way, just to save you the tax, because, let’s face it, tax is not gonna go down anytime soon. In fact, if you listen to a lot of commentators, it’s gonna. Go up. Is that too much?

Kirsty van den Bulk
Thank you. That was no, no, not at all. Because I think, you know, when I said I was paying on you to talk about tax, I think that, you know, a couple of people reached out to me and said Ohh well, I wanna know about this. I wanna know about that and and. It was like. Well, I will do my best to try and cover as much as possible, but actually probably need to set up a meeting with Jonathan, so thank you for giving an overarching view because it is a complex subject. It is something. That we all have to address, and it is also something that is the elephant in the room that we all want to brush under the carpet. So I really appreciate you for sharing that now I. Want to talk about your music?

Jonathan Reeves
I mean, people do. People do brush it under the carpet all the time and I’ll just tell you a story about. A lady who came to see me at the beginning of the year and they had what’s called a chargeable event certificate. So they had an insurance policy and they received a large amount of money from it and they had ignored it completely. They do tax returns and they’ve ignored it completely until last January. She decided she needed to do something about it. So we had to go back and her mend her 21 tax return. And on this Monday, just gone, she sent me the letter from HMRC confirming the penalties and the interest. She had £11,000 in interest to pay and two lots of 2750 lbs in penalties to pay. Just for thinking I don’t need to put that on my tax return, so you need to ask these questions you know, if you. Just don’t leave it. It costs so much money. Yes, she got a nice lump sum of money from this insurance policy, but she’s seeing it eroded away by interest and penalties, you know. It’s a bit heartbreaking when you see things like that really. You know, because money doesn’t come to any of us as easy as it. Should do. Does it? So yeah.

Kirsty van den Bulk
No, thank you. I really appreciate that. So if anyone is worrying, get in touch with Jonathan. So as I said, I wanna talk about your music because you’ve just come back from somewhere, haven’t you?

Jonathan Reeves
Yeah, I’ve just come back from New York because I’ve been to see. Paul Weller, I’m a huge Paul Weller fan and we had to go to York to see him, which is like I don’t know, 250 miles or something 4 hours in the car, we had to go that far because he’s playing in Aylesbury and I remember going him to see him play at Aylesbury when he was on his Downers. When he, you know, the star counts would just be. Up he was out on his own. He didn’t really have much material. He was just out there doing some of the old hits and stuff. And he went to see me. I was being there was like 50 people in the room. No one wanted to go and see him then. And then there used to be this really famous club in electric called Fryers, where all the big bands would go, and everyone’s probably heard of fryers and fryers, the Civic Centre in Aylesbury. And I think it was 2010, something like that was closing down because they built a new theatre. And I remember getting up at 3:00 in the morning. Being the second person in the. Do to get tickets to see Paul Weller cause he was playing the closing gig and I even got interviewed for the local news was quite embarrassing at the time but there we go. So I really wanted to go to Aylesbury because that meant I would have seen him at every time at Aylesbury but I couldn’t get tickets even though I tried really hard and I was even trying on the way home. Yesterday, to see that anyone had any last minute tickets to play at. Also because I really want to go. So because I would have been for the three times he’s played solo at Aylesbury, I would have gone to every time. Yeah, I’m a huge fan. I’ve always been into Paul. Wellers since I. Was 14, I think 1314 maybe. I can’t remember now. You sort of forget. Yeah, 1313. Yeah.

Kirsty van den Bulk
That’s that’s amazing. So I I live in a village that has a music festival, so I’m very lucky and I’m fine. That stuff. I’ve got tickets, which is brilliant. And it’s one of the things I love is going up there and we’ve had some great bands. So apart from Paul Weller, who else is? Who else inspires you musically or? Personal.

Jonathan Reeves
I’ve got such a vast catalogue of stuff that I like. I mean, I’m a vinyl junkie. I’m always out buying vinyl. You know, I’m always looking for an excuse to go and meet clients or people. Professional contacts in London, because it means I can have an an hour or two in a in a record shop. Having a look, I’m always. I mean, I love Northern Soul. So 70 stuff. I I love everything in the sixes, all the stuff that you’d imagine that sort of like the mod stuff up the kinks, small faces, all those sort of bands. Yeah. And I did like Oasis in the 90s. There they were a massive influence and and blur and all those bands. I’ve enjoyed them but. It’s not all just about all the stuff that you hear day in, day out. It’s about discovering things that you have never heard before. Sometimes you know. Ohh yeah, I mean we went to York. And obviously I found a record shop and I was in there one minute and I found this. Little record on a record label called I went in there. I didn’t have my reading glasses and I’m still looking for records. So you guys, you know what you looking for? So I’m just looking for record labels now. So I found something on Sue Records, which is a record label from the 1960s by a guy called Billy Profit. That’s the only thing I could read was his name. And the guy says you wanna listen to it and. So I put it on the deck. I thought, yeah, this is absolutely brilliant. I know. I want this record and what’s even better, because if you’re a mod, you know this, right? It’s about having what they call the promotional copy. If you got the copy that came out before it was released, it just means so much in your collection cause. Being a mode a bit, but being a I’ve been a magpie. You like collecting things. I mean my wife was there more clothes, you know, more books, more records. You know, he’s like you can’t help it. It’s like, yeah. And I blame Paul Weller for that because he’s the one who got me into all this in the first place.

Kirsty van den Bulk
I I love that I do so. A band that changed my life, actually. And it it’s not a band you would expect was the Pixies. So I was a I know, I know. And I so my ex-husband loved the Pixies and this is a really bad story. But we were I shouldn’t really share this. But anyway we’re in a Pixies concert.

Jonathan Reeves
Ohh very good.

Kirsty van den Bulk
We weren’t particularly getting on, and I remember, and my friend Tim tell you what the the the song was. It’s the one that’s got the word devil in it. And I remember this is really bad and I’m so sorry to my ex-husband. I remember looking at him turning. Sideways and going, yeah. That’s it.

Kirsty van den Bulk
Story to actually share is that the pictures changed my life and I decided to leave my first marriage. Yeah, maybe I.

Jonathan Reeves
Really. Really.

Kirsty van den Bulk
Should have shared that one.

Jonathan Reeves
But don’t you think that’s think about music? It it reminds you of so many things and someone wants to do music like draws. You know the the music that you grew up with. You know, it’s really stable at the bottom. You never, you never lose that. And the stuff at the top is a bit more wobbly and you’re a bit in and out of it all the time. Yeah. So I think it is about all those things. You grew up with.

Jonathan Reeves
Then in your 20s and stuff, they’re the ones that really stick with you and lazy, you sort of seem to drift. Little bit more, you’re always looking for something new. Always.

Kirsty van den Bulk
Hear Waterloo sunset and you’re driving down the motorway and you. Just go. Oh, yeah, I’m there. I’m just there it. There’s something about it that makes you, you know, you hear the doors and you and you. I’m I’m. I’m a little bit younger than that age group, you know. For me it was Madonna. It was unfortunate. It was the Jacksons. It it was. With that kind.

Jonathan Reeves
I like Madonna, too, by the way.

Kirsty van den Bulk
Of. Well, 19 yeah, 1982. I was 11 years or something. That was 11. Madonna was huge and and obviously from Madonna. I go to pink, I adore pink and Alanis Morissette, and there’s really power ballads that I just absolutely adore and and, you know, Madonna broke. And I remember being 11, my granny saying what she want and I won’t say the album just because we’re live on air. But I remember saying to my granny, I want this. Love them and my family are quite religious. So when my granny and I opened up my present, which was the big Madonna album like a Yeah. My mum’s face fair. Ohh, I loved that song and I loved that whole album and it really influenced my choices in music. So thank you for sharing your influences and your your journey. It’s been I love it. Now I wanna talk about who’s inspired you along your way because you didn’t just launch business, did you? Yeah. You’ve gone on a journey.

Kirsty van den Bulk
To get to launching your business in 2008. Hope I got that right.

Jonathan Reeves
Yeah, yeah, that’s interesting. It was my wife, really, who’s really inspired me because when we first met, she was always saying to me, you know, you come from a family of shopkeepers, you know, they’ve all worked for themselves. So my mum owned her own business. My brother owns his own business. My granddad owned his own business, you know, and. And she was really surprised when we first met that I actually worked for somebody. And I think that goes back to not that I always knew that I wanted to work for myself and and time before my met my met my wife. I sort of started that journey to do it, but always been a little bit unsure about doing it, but she really gave me the confidence to do it. And say I have to thank her always and she chose the name of the. Business as well. And I remember telling my old boss one of my old bosses that I was setting up on my own and he just said to me, oh, you’re still going. To sell your soul to the devil, are you? And he was fantastic because it’s scary setting up on your own because when you’re working in practise, you’ve got all this knowledge around you. So you know everything because you can just turn to someone and ask and it’s there when you’re set. Up on your own. You don’t necessarily know everything all the time, and he was really good and he was called Sydney and he’s past now, which was a real shame. But he said to me, you know, just ring me up or come and see me and I’ll help you. And I remember taking a client to see him one day because I was really stuck on something right beginning. And he sat down with him and he talked all the way through it and talked me through it. And it is absolutely fine. Mine and that’s what I needed at this time. And then I was just off and running. So I think having good people. You’re my wife, my old boss said. And they were absolutely fantastic, me and I’ve forgotten anyone who’s watching, who thinks they made a big impression as well. Really sorry. But there is something else I need to say as well because go back to networking. When I first went networking, obviously it’s very scary. I met three guys at. Again, over a period of months, who, back in 2008, 2009, who now are my closest and my dearest friends, and all the way through my journey and their journey, we have supported each other continually throughout, and we’ve seen all our businesses grow and all become successful. And that is the power of networking. You know, just meeting. Really good people. And it’s truth, isn’t it about you are the person you’re most you associate. Most with you know something like like I never get, never get it.

Kirsty van den Bulk
Yeah.

Jonathan Reeves
Right, but yeah.

Kirsty van den Bulk
No, I I get you. We’ve had some lovely comments come in, Peter Morrison. I’m going to kill you on this one, Peter. No, I’m not. I love you to pieces. He’s a not bad taste, Kirsty. And some questionable. But a main acceptable. Thank you, Peter. Let’s have a call later. And then Haley said fascinating interview. We used to play white label records on a pirate radio years ago when I was a presenter. Was always excited, yeah.

Jonathan Reeves
Ohh Pirate radio love pirate radio. Yeah, that’s. Got loads of memories for me as well.

Kirsty van den Bulk
And it was always exciting to hear the music before the release of popularity. Nice to meet you, Jonathan Haley. Thank you for for joining. And and you two definitely definitely get together.
Jonathan Reeves
Yeah, we need to talk. Hayley, we need to talk.

Kirsty van den Bulk
So yeah, well, I’m looking forward to our conversation because I think the music is, I mean mine. Yeah. I studied musical theatre, but I’m not actually the biggest fan of musical theatre, but I love music. So. And my daughters like my singing. And I I.

Jonathan Reeves
Hours.

Kirsty van den Bulk
And talk about this very often. But she goes. Mommy, stop it. Stop it. You don’t sound like the pop stars. I’m like. No, that’s. I’m trained in musical. And so yeah, it’s kind of like a different style of singing. It’s like, yeah, it’s just not cool. I’m like, thanks. Thanks, darling. Thanks. So this is where the tables get turned and you get to ask me a question. And of course, I don’t know what it is. So fill your boots, throw something at me and see if. I can answer it.

Jonathan Reeves
OK, so if we found the key to The Time Machine and we could go back to your youth, OK, what thing would you bring back? What item would you bring back? And what thing would you change? To make your business life. Much better, or to the point that where you really would like it to be today.

Kirsty van den Bulk
So this is a really interesting one and and please don’t think I I love my life. I love the journey I’ve been on and you know Mum and Dad, thank you so much for the education you gave me. I. Really appreciate it. But and this. The big ****. I love archaeology. I love geology. I love rocks. I love the formation of the Earth, and I didn’t know this when I was 10 or 11. I didn’t know that I would get obsessed about earth layers and how, you know, a a circle can shape the the, the whole world. Yeah. Anyway, I wouldn’t. I wouldn’t have known. So when I went to arts, I was a dancer, a actor and and absolutely I am 100% a performer. But if I could change one thing. I remember the. Day I was given. Thank you mum. A piece of granite from Aberdeen. And if I’d known at that point how important that piece of granite would have been and how it would have changed my life, if I had gone in a different direction, So what would I be doing now? It’s really interesting. I would definitely be either an archaeologist or a geologist. If my life had taken a different turn. I’m not saying I regret any of the decisions. That I have made, I have a fantastic life and I love the fact that I can stand here and say I’ve been in a guest artist on TV, I’ve performed in musical theatre. I’m hosting a podcast because of the training that I have been given. And my business is based on every single thing that I do Stanislavsky all the training, everything, all the communication, all the marketing, everything in my life has brought me to where I am today. But if I could have a parallel universe rather than changing it, I’d have a geology business because I love geology. So that’s an interesting thing that nobody ever knew. Windows. So thank you for that question.

Jonathan Reeves
No, that is interesting though that is interesting there, isn’t it? You know, what would you have done differently? I think.

Jonathan Reeves
Is. Yeah. What? What? What item would you have brought back from your childhood as well? Because I keep seeing the post of. Sorry.

Kirsty van den Bulk
It is. It’s whatever. It would be. It would it. No, it would be the granite. It would. Yeah. I I’m really gutted. I lost that piece of granite and it through this day, that one piece of granite that was all the way through my childhood. I have a piece now that I found halfway up mountain, which I I normally say don’t take anything away. So when you go out somewhere.

Jonathan Reeves
Really.
Kirsty van den Bulk

And you go for a walk. Leave everything as it is and don’t take anything away except this was shaped like a. Box. So I asked the the planet the the the book, the mountain, the Ex volcano and said please may I take this with me? My husband was like what are you doing? And I I’m feeling. Guilty about taking this rock? I really am. But I kind of it, it shaped like.

Jonathan Reeves
It is the does it sit? On your desk as a paperweight now.

Kirsty van den Bulk
No, it sits in my bedroom along with my other ones. So I have if you. If you saw my husband, I’d drive my husband nuts. So I love rocks. As I said, I’d love rocks. So one of my favourite pieces is a piece of tech type. So that’s volcanic glass that’s come from the moon. And so some people might. Yeah, I know some people like them because they believe they’ve got healing properties and. I’m totally up. With that, you know for your boots. But I love the layers of a bit of calcite a a bit of amethyst, but I love how it’s formed. So yes, if I could go back. I’d go and get that piece of.

Kirsty van den Bulk
Granite because it’s missing from my collection. So yes, you can laugh.

Jonathan Reeves
I’m not laughing. That’s really good. I think it’s really interesting, isn’t it? You know, I was expecting you. You’re gonna say something like go back and get me cabbage patch. Doll or something, right?

Kirsty van den Bulk
Yeah, I think anyone who knows me would would know that. So I had like many girls, I had dolls and I heard the little little crib and I loved it. But I never want it. It’s really funny because it wasn’t an influence in my life and I never want to change the bit, the dolls, nappies or anything. I was much more. Into how was this rock formed? Which it’s a bit weird. We’ve had another comment from Haley saying. Amazing question. So I’m not.

Jonathan Reeves
I think it’s an interesting question, isn’t it? Because I think although we’re all very happy with what we do, because otherwise we wouldn’t be doing it, we’d be doing something else. There are things that happened when we’re growing up, could have changed, could have changed things for us and it’s like, I mean, I never meant to do tax. Tax was an absolute accident for me.

Jonathan Reeves
Me. I mean, I don’t know if you got time. But if I tell you that story.

Kirsty van den Bulk
Yeah, we have what time? Let’s touch on this. We’ll finish on this, but yes, let’s talk about how it was an accident for you.

Jonathan Reeves
So I was working in an engineers office at the time and this lady came to see my boss and I asked who she was and who she worked for and she said she worked for the Internal Revenue. And I remember saying to her, that’s not a job I’d ever want. Imagine working for the Inland Revenue. You can’t have any friends at all, can you? I remember saying this, Sir, and then I decided that I was going to go to college and do my A levels and go to university and train to be a solicitor. And I in the time when I say when I went to do that, I got a part time job at not all, not part time used to call them casual contracts working for the County Courthouse, I. Thought it’d be good experience. The contract, a last six months and the way the civil service used to work. Then they would let you go, even though you could do the job, they would let you go and they give it to somebody else. She’s just like, weird, isn’t it? I mean, you wouldn’t do that in in a real business. Wouldn’t do that. And I was sitting in college this one evening doing a level law, and I sat next to this guy. They’d never sat next to before and he just. Asked me out the blue what I did for a living and. I said I’ve been working for county court and I was looking for a new job because my contract’s coming to an end and he said, why don’t you come and work with me? And I said, where do you work? And he says I work for the collector of taxes, which is now the Inland Revenue HR saying. And I said, well, don’t fancy that. I gave him my phone number and the next morning they rang me up and said would you come for an interview? So I went for an interview. And basically there was no interview. It was. Here’s the Official Secrets act. And can you start tomorrow morning at 9:00. And that was it. And that’s where my tax career started. The funny thing is I never sat next to that lad ever again at college. OK, not because of any reason. Just didn’t. And the office was so big, I think. I only. Never spoke to him once in the whole four years that I worked at HMRC following that, so it was just an absolute fluke that that happened and that’s how I ended. With the career intact.

Kirsty van den Bulk
So some people would say Flake. Some people would say destiny. I met my husband, who’s amazing, by accident, by Fluke, because it was the one day that I was gonna be in this one city 1 town. And he happened to be there. And then somehow we met, and now we’re married. So is it destiny? Is it fake? Who knows? But I love that just where?
Jonathan Reeves
Nice. These things happen though, isn’t it? I mean, they’re just really odd. They’re not a lot of things that you do, or if you went to that city all the time or if I sat next to that guy all the time, you could have sort of understand. Why those things happen? Cause you’ve built relationship with the place, but they’re just one offs. Yeah, and they and they change your lives.

Jonathan Reeves
Massively don’t.

Kirsty van den Bulk
They they do, they do. There’s one also important. Thank you so much for your time this morning. I’ve thoroughly enjoyed the conversation. Put your links in so people can get in touch because everyone’s got a tax problem. Absolutely. Get in touch with with Jonathan and he will help.

Jonathan Reeves
Yeah, yeah.

Kirsty van den Bulk
You. And thank you.

Jonathan Reeves
Thank you for having me, Kirsty. Much appreciated.