311. News: Make tax great again

Apr 8, 2019

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This week we have some great stories for you as David and Ross are joined by a couple of great guests:

Ken Hart, CEO and Founder of Snowdrop Solutions
Megan Caywood, Managing Director at Barclays

We kick off the episode by taking a look at Revolut's newest scandal reveal. The Financial Conduct Authority has made enquiries into Revolut after being contacted by an ex-employee whistleblower who passed on their concerns regarding compliance and the CEO’s conduct as far back as 2016. Megan comments that it seems to have started from the Valentine's incident and snowballed from there and wonders if it could be because the media's loving the scandal and making the culture out to be bad. Ken adds that to be disruptive you have to take risks but if you want to be a trusted financial partner then you need to pivot and do some things differently (02:14).

Next up, We spoke to Gary Turner Co-Founder and Managing Director of Xero UK & EMEA to find out more about making tax digital (08:34).

The panel talk about how making tax digital and how the initiative is going to affect 1.2M VAT-registered businesses. It's the first step in a process that ultimately aims to automate returns and payments for companies and households for all the main taxes. Megan remarks that this has been going on for a while but it's only just becoming mainstream and that it's great to see the regulator making such a strong push for digital. Ken comments that there's a lot of effort made in the UK to make digital organisation work, especially compared to his experiences with the IRS in the US (10:20).

We also talk to Luke from Monzo's vulnerabilty team to find out more about Monzo's involvement with the Big Issue to make magazines resellable (39:37).