Educated at Fettes and Pembroke College, Cambridge, where he studied Moral Sciences, Robert joined Cooper Brothers & Co and qualified as a chartered accountant in 1972. He then moved to Financial Training where he ran their specialist tax course and tax consultancy divisions. He passed the ATII examination in 1979 and received his FTII (now CTA (Fellow)) in 1984 for a thesis on family companies.

After 20 years with Financial Training, Robert decided to return to full-time practice and became a partner in Adam Broke & Co in 1992. This firm merged with Mercer & Hole on 1 October 2001. Robert spends most of his time providing lecturing and training services to other firms and organisations.

Outside his work, Robert joined the Council of The Chartered Institute of Taxation in 1993 and became their President in May 1999. In addition, he has been on the Editorial Board of the weekly magazine “Taxation” since 1990 and has recently joined the Editorial Board of “Simon’s.”

Robert contributed to Sweet & Maxwell’s “Transactions: Group Company Structures” and Tolley’s “Tax on Transactions” and he has written a Tax Digest for Accountancy Books on “Close Company Problems.” He was also one of the original Series Editors for Croner’s Tax Handbooks. In 2006, he wrote a Tolley’s Tax Digest on taper relief as well as producing Tax Digests for the last three Finance Acts. He is currently working on a book for Butterworths entitled “Capital Gains Tax Planning” which should be published in 2008.

Robert is an occasional commentator on private client tax matters for Legal Network Television.