VATease was established in 1990 by Colin Greenhall (pictured below as a Customs Officer  test betting at a racecourse in the 1970s)  to provide independent VAT advice to support accountancy professionals existing knowledge of VAT. VATease now extends its reach to Top 50 accountancy practices, corporates and international organisations but continues to welcome calls from all sizes of organisation. 

 After all, by the very nature of VAT, it is not the size of your business that dictates the complexity of your VAT affairs but the type of transactions you make. 

Colin started out by personally visiting accountany practices promoting the idea of having 'in-house 'VAT advice. He soon gleaned a reputation for fast, affordable VAT advice and his reputation spread. 

Simone Hurst took over the reins of VATease back in 2001 and she continues Colin Greenhall’s original ethos of prompt, affordable, commercial, VAT advice in a language you can understand, given by people with whom it is a pleasure to deal with. She has developed this ethos into a simple four point VATease guarantee for provision of VAT advice.

Simone started her VAT career in HM Customs & Excise in Birmingham as one of the youngest direct entrant Executive Officers in the country working in general VAT control, as well as gaining some experience on the Large Trader’s Unit and in investigation of cash businesses.

Following her departure from HM Customs, she had a break from VAT helping her parents in their businesses.  This gave her invaluable insight and empathy into the issues businesses deal with as part of their daily existence.

She fell back into VAT when approached to work as in-house VAT manager at a busy six partner accountancy firm in Rotherham, where she completed VAT Returns as well as dealing with Client VAT queries, HM Customs VAT inspections and training staff to be more VAT aware to potential issues.

In 1997, Simone moved back to Birmingham to work for Ernst & Young where she enjoyed the larger corporate work, secondment to a large well known brewery and various NHS projects.

In 1999, Simone felt it was time to set up her own independent VAT Consultancy and through an acquaintance she met Colin Greenhall, the founder of VATease and the rest is history.

In 2001, she started lecturing on VAT through the ACCA and continues to do so now. Additionally she speaks on behalf of a number of training organisations as well as regularly providing in house training to businesses.

When talking on VAT, one of Simone's biggest aims is to strive to make VAT as interesting as she possibly can, whilst instilling alarm bells in attendee's heads so they can recognise future VAT problems.