About Spencer Gardner Dickins
Spencer Gardner Dickins (SGD) is a specialist accountancy and tax advisory firm with a strong technical focus across corporate and private client tax.
Its tax team brings together experience from Big Four and Top 10 firms, boutique and HMRC backgrounds, with Martin Chapman leading the firm’s business tax consulting group. SGD is a business of 40 employees but despite its size, SGD regularly handles complex advisory matters spanning M&A, reorganisations, family planning and other technically demanding areas.
For Chapman, effective tax research has never been about finding a single answer. It is about examining an issue from different angles, testing the evidence and applying professional judgement before reaching a conclusion.
Challenge: Finding the evidence that matters
Tax research has changed significantly during Chapman’s career. Where practitioners once worked through physical tax books and manuals, technical libraries made information easier to search. AI now represents the next stage in that evolution.
But for SGD, faster access to information is only useful if it helps advisers reach the right evidence.
Chapman describes his own approach as deliberately looking across several sources rather than relying on one interpretation. Different materials can reveal different perspectives on the same technical issue. Where they disagree, that can signal that further investigation is needed.
That becomes particularly important with complex case law. A conventional library search can leave advisers working through numerous potentially relevant cases before establishing which ones actually apply to the client’s circumstances.
“If it looks the same from different angles, that’s probably what it looks like. If it looks different, you need to investigate further. Protégé was able to go into the depths of quite a specific situation.”
For Chapman, this ability to interrogate an issue from more than one direction is a core part of good tax advice.
Solution: Another perspective on the technical problem
SGD now uses Tolley+™ with Protégé™ across its tax team, with managers, seniors and trainees using it to different extents.
Chapman sees the tool as more than a faster way to search.
When faced with a difficult technical matter, he would traditionally draw on colleagues with different areas of expertise to understand the issue from multiple perspectives. Tolley+ with Protégé gives him another route into that same process - bringing together relevant sources and helping create what he describes as a “sensible collection of thoughts” around the problem.
That can expose sources or arguments that may not immediately emerge from a conventional search.
One recent example involved a client facing an HMRC enquiry into a Business Asset Disposal Relief claim. Chapman initially struggled to find anything directly useful in the manuals. After putting the question into the tool, the research surfaced several potentially relevant cases, including one with significant parallels to the client’s circumstances.
Chapman could not say with certainty whether he would have found that case otherwise.
The value Chapman gained was another piece of evidence to investigate and potentially another argument to make for the client.
“The AI tool is as important as the libraries it’s reading from. With Tolley, you’ve got the confidence.”
Chapman sees the combination of AI and authoritative underlying material becoming increasingly important to the way tax professionals research and deliver work for clients.
Results: Getting to relevant evidence sooner
One of the clearest changes for SGD has been the ability to narrow technical research more quickly.
Case law can be particularly time-consuming. Chapman explains that a traditional search might involve opening and reviewing numerous cases before establishing which two or three are genuinely relevant.
Tolley+ with Protégé can bring those materials together with summaries that help advisers identify where to focus first. Rather than spending significant time working through sources only to dismiss them later, the team can prioritise the most promising evidence earlier in the research process.
As Chapman puts it:
“It’s probably got you there in 10 minutes after you’ve read the snappy summary that Protégé gives you.”
The redirection of time savings to wider tasks can be incredibly valuable to Chapman and firms overall, and with the assistance of Tolley+ with Protégé, as Chapman notes, it can sometimes surface “little gems” from sources outside his usual starting points, encouraging further investigation and broadening the research process.
Professional judgement remains central
For Chapman, using AI does not remove the need for technical scrutiny.
Public AI tools can be useful as an initial starting point, but he sees a significant difference when technical tax research is grounded in identifiable professional sources. Public tools can draw from a wide mix of material, including marketing content and high-level commentary that may not provide the technical depth required for more complex work.
With trusted Tolley content, Chapman can follow the underlying sources and examine the evidence himself.
He is equally clear that advisers still have responsibility for checking the work. AI may accelerate the route to relevant material, but the professional must decide whether the interpretation fits the facts and whether further research is required.
That principle also shapes how SGD’s less experienced practitioners use the technology.
Chapman sees value in junior practitioners learning how to use AI early in their careers but also remain to obtain the right adoption so that they still interrogate case law, manuals and legislation and understand why different sources may point in different directions.
In doing so, Tolley+ with Protégé can help them move beyond simply finding an answer and begin developing the critical thinking expected at more senior levels.
Chapman describes it as helping juniors develop “more manager rather than junior skills”, increasing their level of professional critique and scepticism.
Outlook: AI as part of modern tax research
SGD already has around 10 users of Tolley+ with Protégé across the tax team, and Chapman expects its use to grow alongside the business.
When new colleagues recently join, the firm made sure they had access from day one. For Chapman, that reflects how AI is becoming part of the toolkit practitioners need to develop alongside traditional tax research skills.
The technology may change how advisers reach the evidence, but the objective remains the same: understand the issue, interrogate the sources and apply professional judgement to deliver the strongest possible advice for the client.
As Chapman concludes:
“It’s been a great tool for us and it’s helped us out massively along the way identifying interesting niche points and helping us get reliable solution to our clients much quicker.”
Try Tolley+ with Protégé ™ for free
for 7 days
No Credit Card Required
No Downloads Necessary
Free trials are only available to individuals based in the UK, Ireland and selected UK overseas territories and Caribbean countries.
You will also become a Tolley+ AI Insider to keep you up to date with how AI can transform your tax workflow.
* denotes a required field
