New appointment: Senga Prior

Senga will probably be known to many of you as ATT’s immediate past President, but you may not be aware of her role change and her career to date.

Senga has 25 years’ experience of working in tax. She started her accountancy career working in various accountancy departments. This gave her a broad knowledge of PAYE, VAT and corporation tax, as well as accounts preparation. She also spent a period working for a farming secretarial business. Surprisingly, this started her interest in all things digital, as she not only became involved in the preparation of farming accounts but, as the firm held the Scottish franchise for a farming accounting software package, she was also involved in software and hardware support. In addition, her interest in farming businesses has stayed with her throughout her career.

After this period in the accounting world, Senga decided to specialise in private client tax and joined a small four partner firm in Perth. This gave her the opportunity to build on her experience and, after passing her ATT exams with distinction, she rose to the position of tax manager in charge of private client advisory work (although she still did some corporation tax work reviewing more complex returns). During this time, she started to volunteer with ATT’s Technical Steering Group and HMRC’s Working Together Initiative.

In 2017, Senga moved to Johnston Carmichael becoming a Tax Senior Manager, assisting the Head of Private Client Tax in managing the team using technology to standardise processes over the 11 offices and making the change to paperless systems. She also became an expert on farming taxation and other areas of private client work.

Senga will build on her previous volunteer role to expand ATT’s involvement with Scottish taxes and will use her practical experience in private client work to benefit our members. She will also be taking a lead on Tax Technology for ATT and will be running a session on this subject at our Fellows’ Webinar on 8 October.

During September, Senga will be on secondment to HMRC’s MTD Team, providing hands on advice and support to enable the rollout. Senga will use her experience of working in both small and mid-tier firms to support HMRC in a number of ways – from sharing her practical knowledge and advice, to giving hands on support to agents. She will also help HMRC to ensure that they are providing the type of information both agents and taxpayers need to enable them to make the best preparations for this major change.