Tom Lowry ACA

Partner

I joined Lithgow Perkins in 2013 as a bookkeeping and payroll assistant. After a year or so I gradually transitioned into the accounts preparation team, whilst continuing to work within bookkeeping and payroll. Gaining a lot of experience across most areas of the field helped me and continues to help me in my role. This is one of the unsung advantages of working in a smaller firm, you can experience the whole process, from recording a purchase invoice on Xero to submitting their tax return at the end of the year. It’s an invaluable benefit to any trainee’s understanding and education.

Having qualified as a chartered accountant in 2020 my chosen specialism was an easy choice: Tax. VAT, personal tax, inheritance tax to name a few. As with the other partners, my expertise is wide-ranging, but my main passion is tax. My approach is completely focused on proactivity, rather than reactivity. This approach centres around keeping records on cloud software, providing real time information that we can use periodically throughout a business’s financial year to give profitability, cash flow and tax projections. Following that we look at ways of mitigating that tax liability, or at least ensure there are no nasty surprises to come the end of the financial year when the tax is due. I like to compare my services to that of having your own finance director, but without the annual salary!

My main passion for accountancy and tax is the value that can be added to a wide variety of individuals and businesses in differing sectors. I always had a keen interest in business studies at school. The financial aspects of that syllabus concentrated on management information, i.e. budgeting, forecasts etc. My interests in this side of finance is reflected in my approach to accountancy and tax.