About us

Dugald Carstairs
Dugald left HM Customs & Excise’s Edinburgh VAT Office in February 1988 to become the first VAT consultant serving the three Scottish offices of Price Waterhouse, then one of the “Big 6” accountancy firms. By the time the firm merged with Coopers & Lybrand in July 1998, to become PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC), Dugald was the Director in charge of a team of 12 consultants.

Dugald left PwC in October 2001 to set up on his own, as Carstairs & Co VAT Solutions. That business has been merged into The Carstairs & Liddell VAT Consultancy Ltd from 7 April 2003.

Dugald is a past chairman of the Scottish Chapter of the VAT Practitioners Group.

Jim Liddell
Jim has more than 30 years’ VAT experience. He joined HM Customs & Excise in 1974 and left after 10 years to join a “Big 6” firm in Manchester. Between 1984 and 2002, Jim worked for a number of the Big 6/5/4 firms and spent 3 years as in-house advisor for one of the major UK clearing banks.

Jim specialises in financial services - his last role at PwC was as the Director in charge of the firm's Financial Services VAT practice in the regions - but his client portfolio covers all areas of business.

In 1985, he was a founder member of the VAT Practitioners Group in the regions.