Diane Wright CTA has joined the expert tax team at Croner-i as a senior technical writer and brings with her a wealth of experience in tax: her work for Croner-i will include compliance aspects of the management of taxes, employment-related securities, capital allowances and corporation tax.

Joining Paul Robbins’ team, Wright has been working in tax for more than 25 years. Following a decade at KPMG and PwC dealing with a large range of clients, she spent almost 10 years working in the in-house tax team of FTSE 100 company, Cairn Energy. She then re-joined KPMG for a time before joining MHA Henderson Loggie as a senior tax manager based in Edinburgh dealing with a wide variety of issues, largely based around owner managed businesses and their shareholders.

In her last role in practice Diane spent a significant part of her time working with employment-related securities and tax-advantaged share schemes, especially enterprise management incentives (EMI), advising clients on these topics and dealing with their particular scheme requirements.

This is an area that she very much enjoys and one that she will continue to focus on in her new role at Croner-i. Most recently, she was pleased to see confirmation in the Autumn Statement that Finance Bill 2023-24 will include legislation to remove the requirement to notify the grant of EMI options within 92 days after the date of grant. For options granted 6 April 2024 onwards, these can simply be included in the end of year return.

Wright also sees this as an interesting time for capital allowances: alongside the announcement in the Autumn Statement that full expensing is to be made permanent, a technical consultation was announced on wider changes to the capital allowances legislation. 

On the subject of Making Tax Digital (MTD), she welcomed the news of simplifications to MTD for Income Tax Self-Assessment (ITSA). She noted the subsequent criticism of the roll-out of MTD by the Public Accounts Committee, the tax professional bodies, and the Low Incomes Tax Reform Group. The period until April 2026 (currently proposed to be the start of mandatory roll-out of MTD for ITSA) promises to be very interesting.

Useful links

Links to commentary, legislation and other resources concerning employment-related securities, EMI, capital allowances for plant and machinery and Making Tax Digital