Suzanne Clements

Experience

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  HM Revenue & Customs

  Feb 2003 - Nov 2017

  Inspector of Taxes / Customer Relationship Manager

  I was a graduate entrant onto the former Inland Revenue's Inspector Training Programme and undertook Core Professional Training to work with large corporate entities. I trained as a qualified Skills Assessor and had a long term involvement with designing, delivering and assessing a range of Civil Service internal qualifications and development programmes. As a Customer Relationship Manager I co-ordinated HMRC's engagement with large corporate groups across various heads of tax, heading bespoke teams of tax specialists tailored to each customer to ensure that risks were addressed in an informed and proportionate way, while maintaining customer relations to encourage compliance, real time working, and the move towards low risk behaviour.My customers were some of the UK's largest companies, with diverse and complex tax affairs. Ideveloped an understanding of their commercial environments and values, sharing perceptions ofrisk areas and planning work to be done in open dialogue with company personnel. I gave customer outreach seminars to promote take-up of R&D reliefs, and arranged and deliveredtraining on the (then) new 'RDEC' scheme to large corporates, Scottish Enterprise and HMRC's LargeBusiness Service. As a specialist R&D advisor to Large Business I dealt with large corporate customers across a number of industries, and HMRC case teams to manage claims for research and development tax credits/expenditure credits and patent box elections within the Large Business stream. I was part of a national team of specialists and worked to create processes for the risk assessment of 'RDEC' claims under new legislation. I interacted extensively with the tax teams of large corporates, Big 4 accountants, Customer Relationship Managers, corporation tax specialists, transfer pricing consultants and internal accountants to address live risks in a professional and pragmatic way, while upholding the incentives. Show less

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  Cabinet Office

  Oct 2015 - Oct 2022

  Fast Stream Assessor

  The Fast Stream recruitment scheme runs annually and aims to recruit high-calibre graduates toleadership development programmes within the Civil Service. The recruitment process involvesattendance at a demanding assessment centre and the successful completion of various exercises.I assessed performance in various tests designed to bring out the candidates’ skills in the strategic approach to objectives, decision-making, leadership and communication.

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  MSC R&D

  Oct 2022 - Nov 2023

  R&D Tax Quality Assurance
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  Ad Valorem Group

  Jan 2024 - now

  Head of QA and Technical Policy