Malcolm Brewer has been part of the Private Client team at Charter Tax since December 2015, having been a colleague of Mark Howard’s for 30 years previously.
“After working in ‘general practice’ for over 40 years I am able to deal with almost anything that is thrown at me,” says Malcolm. “I enjoy the range and variety which Private Client work offers and I’ve been fortunate to have interesting clients to look after for many years.”
Malcolm’s role sees him dealing with a variety of small businesses, farms and personal tax cases. Most recently, though, an increasing amount of his work has been focused on trust accounts, trust tax and Inheritance Tax.
“As far as advisory work is concerned, there is always an element of that in compliance work, but we do have some highly qualified tax advisors who deal with large or complex advisory and consulting projects so my role, if required, would be to provide support to them, in the background,” he adds.
Malcolm says a priority for him is ‘client retention and bringing in the next generation as clients’: “Over the years, I have prided myself on developing relationships with clients to become their ‘trusted advisor’ and first point of contact.”
Malcolm admits that he ‘fell into’ the profession, having joined a local firm of accountants when he left school in 1975.
“I didn’t actually know what an accountant was or did before I joined,” he says. “There were no mobile phones or computers then, which meant the work and how it was done was very different. However, I found that I enjoyed accountancy, and the office environment and just sort of grew into the job. Now, I can’t imagine doing anything else.”
The past 12 months have been challenging ones for everyone and Malcolm says he’s become ‘pretty comfortable’ with the new way of working.
“When the pandemic hit and the government brought in the range of support measures, I contacted my clients who were eligible or potentially eligible for government support to keep them in the picture with what was being made available and point them in the right direction for making claims,” he says. “As the office has been closed, I have contacted those clients who would normally have come into the office to meet or deliver tax return papers/accounting records and arranged to collect and return their documents. This has helped them and also ensured that the work came in.”
He adds: “From a personal point of view, I am looking forward to rediscovering the pub for a beer after work on a Friday.”
Malcolm says that Charter Tax is a ‘real team’.
“I think ‘team’ is sometimes a word used without any real meaning in the corporate world but the directors here at Charter Tax are really inclusive with the staff and we do all work together and support each other,” he explains. “I look at the other members of the team and am in awe of how bright and talented they are. I would say that, as a firm, we are focused on delivering a great personal service to our clients. We are a relatively small firm but have big firm quality staff.”
In his spare time, Malcolm, who lives in Tunbridge Wells, says lockdown showed him that a garden is also for sitting in, as well as ‘labouring over’.
He continues: “I am a fisherman and was glad that that was restored to us quite early. There is nothing like sitting on the bank of a river or lake in the countryside and in the sunshine for making the world go away. We have also rediscovered holidays in the UK and were fortunate to be able to have some time away in Cornwall in between lockdowns in September 2020 and again in April 2021, where we took the children on holiday 20 or more years ago. So more of that to come hopefully.”