Given the uncertainty which currently surrounds the timing and likelihood of achieving a final Brexit deal, it is difficult to make strong predictions about the future of taxation and regulation in the UK. It is also difficult to confidently assume what the make-up of a post-Brexit government will look like. Yet let us assume, as the Chancellor Philip Hammond has in recent comments rejecting the ‘Singapore model’, that there is a Conservative government leading the UK into a post-Brexit future.

I am a member of two European Commission expert groups on VAT and have sat on an advisory panel looking at direct tax and exchange of financial information across EU states. What I have come to recognise through this engagement is that the UK is highly influential in the EU. English is the main and quite often the only language used in meetings and for written comments, which gives us an immediate advantage.