Socrates Socratous, Director

Socrates’ VAT experience exceeds 20 years. Before starting SOC VAT Consultants, he spent nearly 5 years as a senior manager at PricewaterhouseCoopers in London. As part of the Middle Markets team, he advised middle to multi-national sized clients in a variety of sectors. His work included advising on issues such as land and property transactions, partial exemption and business/non-business methods, international services and supplies of goods, finance and cash flow planning. He specialised in servicing charities and other not-for-profit organisations and was the head of the National Charities and Not-for-profit team which included housing associations.

Prior to PwC, Socrates worked for Horwath Clark Whitehill, a top twenty accountancy firm for just over 9 years advising small to medium businesses and charities.

In addition to his professional experience, Socrates spent 5 years at Customs & Excise, both as an Excise officer and VAT inspector visiting businesses in north London.

Socrates has continued to advise the not for profit sector and in addition has built up a portfolio of other practices who do not have an in house VAT specialism and hence use SOC for support.

Socrates is a member of the Charity Finance Directors Group and Charity Tax Reform Group and regularly presents seminars for charities and local ACCA meetings. He also writes and delivers bespoke VAT training courses for clients on request.

Linda Skilbeck

Linda has over 20 years experience in VAT. 6 years at PricewaterhouseCoopers in London, where she advised medium and large multi-national sized clients in the financial and property sectors. Her work included advising on land and property transactions, partial exemption, international services, finance and cash flow planning. Latterly she was seconded to the Knowledge and Innovation team being responsible for internal knowledge sharing, ideas development and writing technical publications for both the PwC National VAT practice and for their clients.

9 years with BDO Stoy Hayward where she specialised in advising property companies, charities and other not for profit organisations. 

Linda joined Customs & Excise after graduating from University of Sheffield and spent 4 years as a visiting VAT inspector.