Your Agriculture Champion

Sarah qualified as a Chartered Accountant in a medium sized firm and has over 25 years of experience in both practice and industry. Before joining Carpenter Box in October 2018, she ran her own accountancy practice in West Sussex. She is passionate about helping her clients grow their business. Sarah is a partner in the Business Services Group advising owner managed businesses from new start-ups to established family businesses. She specialises in supporting small owner managed business owners by advising in business development and strategic planning alongside providing professional tax and accounting support. She understands the pressures small business owners face on a day to day basis and advises on cash-flow management and pricing.

Mark is EQ’s Forfar office Managing Partner and head of our Agriculture team where he leads the promotion of the firm’s rural services. He joined the firm in 2001 and has been partner since 2016. Mark is well known for being a specialist agricultural accountant that comes from a farming background, which he is still actively involved in the farming operations at home. This means he is aware of exactly what the modern-day agricultural business requires from their accountant and business advisor. He appreciates there is far more to it than just the numbers. In addition to general compliance services of accounts and taxation, Mark also has a great depth of knowledge in succession planning, farm budgeting and refinancing strategies.

I oversee the Rural Business and Landed Estates team for Monahans covering all of our offices. Being from a farming background myself I have first-hand experience of the issues facing both farmers, rural businesses and landed estates. A large part of my role is to help farms and rural clients with their tax and accounting needs. Understanding the farming process is a great advantage during an audit, as work can be tailored to the rural environment, and ensures feedback is relevant and constructive for the client as part of the process. This has helped me gather valuable expertise to help clients with diversification and development projects, which are becoming an increasingly important income stream for farms and estates.

Chris is an Associate Tax Director at RMT, advising clients over a number of different business sectors across a wide range of areas, including tax-efficient profit extraction for business owners, structuring advice for landlords, residence and domicile matters for clients with international tax implications, as well as assisting trustees with trust tax matters. Chris’ focus towards assisting RMT’s agricultural clients lies with the over-seeing of the annual tax compliance work, including advising on associated tax matters such as averaging claims, capital allowance claims, Capital Gains Tax matters and the use of the Herd Basis. Beyond this, Chris devotes time to discussing longer-term issues with clients such as the preservation of valuable tax reliefs and succession planning.

Nick is a Business Advisory Partner and the firm’s Finance Partner, heading up the finance team and lead partner for the Farm and Estates advisory team. Nick has spent much of his time with the firm working with rural business and has gained a deep knowledge and understanding through this work of the challenges faced by business in the agricultural sector. Nick now heads up our Farm and Estates specialist team and recognises the need to provide sound advice at a time of significant change to the farming industry. Nick enjoys advising family owned business of which many are farms and estates but his clients also operate within manufacturing, services, leisure and construction.