I argue with HMRC for a living, on behalf of landlords. Which means I've combined the least glamorous profession in Britain with its least popular client base. So as you can imagine, I'm about the worst person you could seat at a dinner party. Especially if someone asks me about tax, at which point I become genuinely unbearable.
So here we are. We're taking on Section 24, one limited company tax return at a time.
Why property
I didn't really choose it. It was just what we did on Sundays.
My family were in property, so from about the age of six I'd be the one pulling the property section out of the newspaper. Sundays were for viewings with agents. Other kids had football or horse riding. I had kitchen colour schemes and an opinion on the asking price.
By the time I was old enough to decide what to do with myself, I already understood how property actually behaves. Not as an asset class in a textbook, but as a thing people build their lives around, argue with their families about, and get badly wrong when nobody is watching the numbers.
Why I founded My Property Accountant
I trained in the Big 4. If you know, you know. If I were pretentious enough, my LinkedIn bio would say Ex-EY. It doesn't, though I've clearly found somewhere else to mention it.
That gave me a view most accountants working with small businesses have never had. I was inside enormous, complicated organisations, serving some of the largest clients in the world, watching how they make decisions. I've seen exactly what it takes to get a giant company funded for a big deal: a room full of finance bros and me, still going at midnight, hundred-tab Excel models open on every screen, then all of us fighting over the last Uber out of Canary Wharf.
Here's what struck me when I started working with property businesses instead. The gap isn't intelligence and it isn't ambition. It's access to advice. Large companies don't make a single significant decision without someone senior modelling it first. Nobody at that level buys, borrows or restructures because the bank balance looked healthy that morning. They know what a decision will cost before they commit to it, and they've asked someone who does this every day.
The landlord with nine properties across three companies is making decisions of the same scale, often far bigger relative to everything they own, off a bank balance and an instinct. Not because they're careless, but because nobody has ever offered them the alternative. There is no shortage of accountants who will file the accounts afterwards. There are very few who will sit down with you beforehand.
So that's what My Property Accountant is. Everything big businesses get right about their finances, built for property businesses at the size where it actually changes the outcome.
And that's the part I care about. There isn't much joy in making a corporate giant slightly larger. There is something genuinely liberating about being the person who tells someone the numbers work, and then watching them hand in their notice at a job they've spent a decade hating. Or sitting with a family and showing them exactly what the company can pay them each month, what that costs in tax, and what's left to build the life they've been working towards. Same technical work I was doing at midnight for people who would never have noticed the difference. Here, people notice.
What people say about working with me
That I'm direct. If what you're planning is wrong, I'll tell you why. That's the job. Then I'll tell you what we're doing instead, because anyone can tell you no. The useful part is what comes after it.
That I'm obsessive about getting things right. I've been called a control freak about quality by people who meant it as a criticism. I've decided to keep it.
Outside the numbers
I love food. Cooking it, eating it, and spending an unreasonable amount of time researching where to eat next in London. I'm also properly interested in nutrition and health. The two do not get on, because nothing genuinely worth ordering has ever been good for you.
Most of my weekends involve friends and, ideally, an event that calls for a dress. People spot me at Wimbledon or the polo and assume I follow the sport. I could not tell you the score. I'm there for the outfit.
I also have a shopping problem. I am excellent at other people's financial discipline.
I live in London near Hyde Park. I moved here five years ago and have no plans to leave.
If this sounds like what you've been missing
I work with limited company property investors and portfolio landlords. Multiple properties, multiple companies, structures that have grown faster than the admin behind them.
