Putting the world to rights in 2026 - with Brian Jukes

Martin Gibbs is joined in this episode of Three Steps Ahead by Brian Jukes, Joint Managing Partner and Head of Corporate Tax at Dafferns, a leading independent accounting firm, based in Coventry. Martin and Brian worked together for more than 25 years and together they reflect on the state of the world in 2026:

- What are the key issues business leaders are facing today?
- What impact does the latest UK tax regime have?
- What on earth is going on with the UK Government, the USA and how can business leaders plan with this uncertainty?
- 2 Accountants Talk about cars again! --- Where are we with the UK car market, the ZEV mandate and the push towards full EVs  -- and how did Brian cope with a long distance road trip to Scotland in his EV?
- The Rise of AI and how this is impacting both the professional services market and employment prospects
- and finally Brian's top book recommendation for business leaders in 2026

More about our guest Brian Jukes and Dafferns

More about Three Steps Ahead
Three Steps Ahead is a business and leadership podcast for business owners, founders and senior leaders who want practical strategy that actually works. Most business podcasts talk about what happened - Three Steps Ahead is about what you should do next.

• Who it’s for: business leaders, founders, senior managers
• What makes it different: practical strategy, simple thinking, real experience
• Why now: 2026 is shaping up to be volatile — clarity matters more than ever

Drawing on decades of advisory, mentoring and peer-group experience, the podcast focuses on how leaders plan well, think beyond the immediate, and navigate uncertainty with confidence.

Listen & follow
Apple Podcasts | Spotify | Amazon
🌐 https://threestepsahead.buzzsprout.com
Hosted by: Martin Gibbs | Richard Miller | Simon Cossey

Three Steps Ahead - Practical strategy for the next move

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:00

Hi, everybody, and welcome to the Three Steps Ahead podcast. Three Steps Ahead is a business strategy podcast for business leaders looking to learn about best practice and get three steps ahead of the competition in 2026. My name is Martin Gibbs, and today I have with me a very special guest, my old friend Brian Jukes. Hi, Brian. Hi, Martin. So who are you, Brian?

SPEAKER_00 0:26

Tell us about yourself. Well, I'm glad you are. So I I'm a tax advisor working with Daphons. I've been with Daphons for longer than I care to mention, but uh the second stint, 26 years nearly. I've been a tax advisor for most of my working life. And I if you cut me in half, you would find that I I have Daphons running all the way through me.

SPEAKER_01 0:52

And uh hopefully uh when you've got Daphne's running all the way through you, it's it it's not gonna look quite like the fancy new 130th anniversary logo. No, it would be like Paul Rock. The traditional Daphne's flying D. Of course, as many people will know, I was with Daphne's for many years, and Daphne's managing partner for a long period of time, and you are one of my successors as managing partner at Daphne's. And we you and I worked together for 25 years, I think it was. Yeah, so we've worked together an awful long time, and we've done an awful lot of videos and podcasts over the years together. So I am absolutely delighted to welcome you as uh one of our guests on today's Three Steps Ahead. I'm very pleased to be here. Richard Miller and Simon Cossey, my two regular sidekicks, will be back in future episodes. So, Brian, you're a tax expert. So, in the world of tax, what are the key questions that business leaders are asking you at the moment?

SPEAKER_00 1:56

As you might expect, agricultural property relief and business property relief regarding inheritance tax planning is the number one. I suppose really it's talking about exit planning in a much bigger context. Exit planning in general is I think very much in focus. I'm not saying that there are deals being done left, right, and centre right now. It's more a case that I think there's a lot of pent-up demand. I think people have become fed up quite rapidly. It's a number of factors all coming at the same time. You have the geopolitical turmoil being caused by a variety of factors, mostly the thing we're not going to mention right now.

SPEAKER_01 2:38

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 2:39

Yeah, absolutely. And on top of that, you you have artificial intelligence marching at an incredibly fast pace, which is just disrupting business across the board. It's it's very difficult to know whether your marketplace is going to be the same tomorrow as it was yesterday. I think that's really focusing people's minds and saying, well, actually, now is the time to get out.

SPEAKER_01 3:06

Do you think the uh the post-pandemic world is a part of that?

SPEAKER_00 3:10

Yes, and absolutely. COVID COVID has changed the face of the way we do business and the way we work. It it's never going to go back to the way it was before. Some people are comfortable with that, others are not. So, yes, that's definitely um having an impact.

SPEAKER_01 3:27

And as we've joked many times over the years, Brian, you are a few years younger than me, but not that many. But I am seeing more and more people of my age uh retiring and people still retiring in their late 50s. I mean, I I waited till 62 before I retired. But it does seem that post-pandemic, now that things have settled down just a little bit, but obviously there's a lot of turmoil in the world still, time is moving on, and a lot of people are uh making that transition. Daphne's have acted for a lot of owner-managed businesses, some significant, ambitious, growing owner-managed businesses for many years. I imagine a number of those are going to be looking at options for for for exiting, which is typically going to be a trade sale, some form of management by now, or an employee ownership type structure.

SPEAKER_00 4:15

Yeah, employee ownership has become more popular in in recent years. It's definitely attractive if you've got the right structure. It's not going to work for everyone, though.

SPEAKER_01 4:24

The budget was lost November, or was it October?

SPEAKER_00 4:28

November. Remind me of what the big changes were. It was actually relatively quiet. There were some capital allowances changes that were fairly fairly significant, but I don't think we've yet really felt them yet. The impact of them. For our clients, uh the typical OMB, they won't have a significant impact because most of our clients are claiming full allowances anyway. On top of that, there was a significant change to the APR, BPR regime, how that's going to work.

SPEAKER_01 5:01

So the APR is agricultural property relief, and this is the big inheritance tax change that was announced 2024 budget that was basically going to change the face of farming in the UK by family farms fully within inheritance tax.

SPEAKER_00 5:20

That was introduced with a really swathing effect in that it was going to reduce the amount of value of a business that could be transferred onto the next generation down to one million pounds free of inheritance tax. So anything any value in excess of that would be exposed to some inheritance tax. There was 50% relief on value over 1 million, so it would be 20% on the value in excess. That was something that farmers in particular relied upon for many years to say it's okay, we don't need to worry about the business, we can pass that on free of inheritance tax, and so we're not going to eat into that capital value at the point of death. So we don't need to plan for that ahead of time. We can just sit on that asset and then it will pass to the next generation. That made business planning much more straightforward because you didn't have that leakage of value. But now, suddenly, in the autumn 24 budget, you have this sweeping change that caused an awful lot of consternation, particularly in the farming market. In the 25 budget, the one million was made transferable. In other words, if you have a husband and wife where both husband and wife have an interest in the business or the farm, then both can take advantage of the one million and any unused relief on first debt transferred to the surviving spouse. So the one million became two million to all intents and purposes. You might say, well, what what difference is that going to make? Two million pounds is still not enough to really make a tangible difference. So and that was true, and so there was more campaigning that went on behind the scenes. And just before Christmas, literally a couple of days before Christmas, there was a further announcement to say that that one million became 2.5 million. And so in reality, we've got five million of value that can be passed on free of inheritance tax. That's a tangible figure. That that means that farmers in particular can look and look on that and say, well, okay, I can do something with that. That's not going to destroy the farm. We we can hopefully pass on the majority of the value free of inheritance tax. So that that was quite a sweeping change.

SPEAKER_01 7:41

But typical of the way the Labour government have operated, they come in, make changes, it's just not been thought through, and bit by bit they have to backtrack.

SPEAKER_00 7:51

That's absolutely right. And that that is my my biggest bugbear with this government. They haven't thought things through, or perhaps more to the point, they don't stick to their guns. So perhaps that's even worse. You should maybe nail your colours to the mast and get on with it. Take your time.

SPEAKER_01 8:07

Or even think it through. Think it through and then nail your colours to the mast.

SPEAKER_00 8:10

And then nail your colours to the mast. Yeah. So so yes, I suppose they're the worst of both worlds. So we we've ended up with this this mishmash of of legislation where we don't know whether it's actually the final legislation or not. And and that's that's what that's very difficult to contend with.

SPEAKER_01 8:27

One of the things that we were uh a little bit concerned about, you and I, before today's recording, is there's so much going on in the world that we might start talking about something, and indeed we probably will start talking about stuff which will rapidly become out of date. So today is Tuesday the 21st of April. It's not yet lunchtime. As we sit here now, this chat we'd never heard of last week, Sir Ollie Robbins is going to be in front of a Commons committee of some sort today. And the outcome of that is the Prime Minister might have resigned by tea time. Who knows? Over in the United States, goodness knows what's going on. Last week he was picking a fight with the Pope, for heaven's sake, putting out pictures of himself as where this is all going. The King's going to visit next week, isn't he?

SPEAKER_00 9:13

He is. I know there are people clamouring for that to be cancelled for obvious reasons, but I I think you can distance the king's visit from pandering to the American government because it it's actually for a state event, isn't it? It's it's a big celebration.

SPEAKER_01 9:32

I suppose the Americans are celebrating 250 years of independence from the UK. It's almost a bit of a difficult one that we're celebrating it, but we'll we're in the yeah.

SPEAKER_00 9:39

Yeah, I don't I think we're we're commiserating with them just at the moment.

SPEAKER_01 9:43

I think we are. We are commiserating.

SPEAKER_00 9:45

Yes. There is a very serious point there that that underlies all of that. And that's again the fact that we can't plan with any certainty from day to day. The things that happen from American foreign policies have such a massive impact on the rest of the world, and the UK is in no way, shape, or form insulated from that. And so we we have all sorts of knock-on effects that that could happen tomorrow. That's really hard to contend with.

SPEAKER_01 10:20

If you look at the situation that's going on in the Strait of Humuz at the moment, where is that going and what is the impact of that going to be? Fuel prices. I think I've filled up at the weekend and paid 194.9 or something. Has it ever been higher than that? I can't remember.

SPEAKER_00 10:38

No, I don't think so.

SPEAKER_01 10:40

The benefit we shoot out at this point. Brian goes, why do you go to petrol stations?

SPEAKER_00 10:45

Absolutely. The benefit for me is that there's a discount on electricity prices just at the moment. So I'm paying just over three pence a a kilowatt hour for charging my car, which is crazily cheap, and I I know it won't last, but EVs have suddenly become very attractive. And I have heard that there is a a significant uptick in inquiries into EVs, new EVs.

SPEAKER_01 11:10

It is an interesting one. If you look at the price of petrol or diesel, and what I was filling up with at 194.9 was diesel, I think roughly 56 pence fixed of that is fuel duty. There's the the price of the fuel plus the fuel duty and then VAT on top of that, including VAT on the fuel duty. So with all of this at the moment, the government is reaping it in in terms of tax revenues. And if you look at the price of electricity to recharge an EV, if you move away from home EV charging and you're having to rely on the public infrastructure, it's pretty much the same price.

SPEAKER_00 11:50

It is if you're if you're using a supercharger on on a you know a motorway service station type arrangement, then yes, it's it is pretty similar.

SPEAKER_01 11:59

But the amount of tax the government is getting from that EV charge, the government are making less revenue on public EV charging than they are on fuel that goes into combustion engine cars. Correct. So that is a tax difference that as more and more EVs hit the road, and as any car manufacturer attempts to meet the ZEV, the zero emission vehicle mandate, which in 2026 says that 33% of cars sold have to be full EVs. As more and more cars move to the point where they are full EVs, the tax take for the government is going to be reducing. That is a problem.

SPEAKER_00 12:42

Well, it it's a it's a hole that has to be plugged somewhere else, no pun intended.

SPEAKER_01 12:48

One of the videos that you and I kicked off with, I think we must have done it during lockdown in 2020.

SPEAKER_00 12:54

Yes, it was.

SPEAKER_01 12:55

Before lockdown, you and I used to walk up to Marks and Spencer's every lunchtime and put the world to rights as we went up to get our sandwich. One of the things we like to talk about was cars. See, lockdown came, we were working at home. So we got together and we did this uh two accountants talk about cars video. This is where I was the petrol head.

SPEAKER_00 13:12

The EV skeptic.

SPEAKER_01 13:13

At the time, you were rattling around in an old Audi diesel estate, I seem to remember, but you were lusting after this vehicle that had been announced that was coming in a couple of years, which was the Audi Q4. That's right. And that's what I have. The the Audi Q4, I think, is a very interesting car because, as I've teased you endlessly, it of course is not an Audi. It's a Skoda Enyak with a with with a with a with a shell suit on. But in fact, what all these cars are, they are variants of the Volkswagen ID4 ID5.

SPEAKER_00 13:46

Yeah, that's right. I mean, you can say that the same about any vehicle in in the VW Audi, Skoda, Sayat range. But it's not just that.

SPEAKER_01 13:55

Were you aware that the new Ford Capri and Ford Explorer are also re-badged ID5s?

SPEAKER_00 14:02

No, I didn't know that.

SPEAKER_01 14:03

Um that is all because of the the ZEV mandate. So if you go back to 2020, the best-selling car in the UK would have been the Fiesta, probably chased up by the Focus. Both of those vehicles Ford have had to kill off because of the the ZEV mandate, the zero emission vehicle mandate, which has been rising from 22 to 25 to 28. And in 2026, as I said earlier, is uh 33% one in three cars sold has to be an electric vehicle, full electric, and there is, I think it's a 12,000 pound penalty per vehicle if they fail to meet that. Ford, therefore, A, need vehicles to sell, and B, they're going to be buying credits from people like Tesla, who are just selling electric vehicles. But Ford needed electric vehicles. They had the Mustang, which is an American EV and not a Mustang, but still a but to fill the gap in Europe, they'd done the unthinkable, which is just take an off-the-shelf vehicle, being the Volkswagen ID5, put a body on it and rebadge it as the Capri, and then put a slightly different badge on it and call it the Explorer. Now they are, by all accounts, pretty good electric vehicles in a world where Ford is selling rebadged Volkswagens.

SPEAKER_00 15:20

They must be having to pay VW an awful lot of money for that.

SPEAKER_01 15:24

Absolutely. Um I mean it's a stop gap and it gets them from A to B. The UK is currently out of kilter with the EU in terms of the timetable for the shift over to full EVs.

SPEAKER_00 15:35

Do you think the European agenda will come back in line with UK or is this a permanent shift?

SPEAKER_01 15:43

No, I think what is likely to happen is the UK will align with the EU, permitting combustion engines to continue. But I think the direction all that's going is is hybrids. Hybrids are the answer.

SPEAKER_00 15:56

Is it though? I mean, this is this is something that I've I've obviously considered quite a lot. And the conclusion I reached was that a hybrid is actually the worst of both worlds because you're carrying around two sets of technology on one platform. And so uh you you're duplicating, you've got more to go wrong, you're carrying extra weight that's not doing anything at certain times. It just seems like that's a mistake to go down that path.

SPEAKER_01 16:22

We will see. When we were talking about this back in 2020, if somebody had shown you a picture of 2026 and the state of the EV market today, I think you'd have been a little bit disappointed.

SPEAKER_00 16:33

I wouldn't necessarily say that because there there are an awful lot more models on the market now, and there's a lot more choice and more inexpensive choices, which there weren't back then. The Chinese infiltration of the UK car market. That's quite a significant impact. It has increased the number of electric vehicles on on the roads significantly because of the price point. I think they're all ugly as sin, if you ask me, but that's that's just my point of view. But there is also another very significant change across those six years, and that's the infrastructure in the UK, the charging infrastructure, public charging. That that has ramped up considerably in the last two to three years. If you go back to 2020, you would have been asking me, would you ever take your EV on holiday to Scotland with you? And my answer would have been, oh, I think that's a bit of a risk. Yeah, I don't fancy that. But no you did that last summer, didn't last winter, not this one, just gone 25. And it was absolutely no trouble at all. It was it was a real joy to to experience that, if I'm honest. There was no range anxiety. Uh, you had to do your planning ahead of time.

SPEAKER_01 17:45

But you did a bit of getting a bit grumpy on a late night trip to Avymore when you were on your third non-profit.

SPEAKER_00 17:53

There was one exception to all of that, and that was Avymore. For some reason, all of the charges in Avymore have broken. Apart from Avymore, it was a wonderful experience.

SPEAKER_01 18:02

We've just got back from a week in Scotland where we clocked up just over a thousand miles in the week. The only fuel anxiety or range anxiety we had really goes back to the background of what was going on in the Iran War. Absolutely. Fuel prices were rocketing. At that stage, diesel was up to 184.9 when we filled up at Dune. We were very anxious that we had a full tank of diesel for as much of the time as we could in Scotland because we then knew we had the range to get home. And it's a long time since I've had that.

SPEAKER_00 18:37

You have to take yourself back, don't you, to '99, I can't remember, when there were blockades at fuel depots, weren't there, and and refineries that actually got to a point where I had to borrow my wife's car to be able to get to work because I'd run out. Those were very difficult times, and I I wouldn't want to go ever go back to that, I have to say. And if you if you look at the news, then you'll see that there are countries in the world, quite a number of countries in the world, that are already experiencing fuel shortages, and and that's that has such a massive impact on every every aspect of life, but particularly business, of course.

SPEAKER_01 19:15

So perhaps bringing this back to the the business world is the uncertainty that is facing the UK, the USA massively so, and the world economy, due to the President of the United States' attitude and approach to relationships with the world. There is a new world order. In some ways, it was probably due. The previous world order was left over from the Second World War and the role that the USA elected to take after the Second World War with the founding of NATO. That worked really well. But 80 years later, maybe there needs to be an amendment to the dynamic of the way that worked, but not in the brutal and aggressive way that is definitely going on at the moment. How is it? How is all that impacting day-to-day business life?

SPEAKER_00 20:01

I I would say that the most significant impact is that businesses are going into liquidation. Okay. Because it's it's AI as well, but I would say it's it's the it's the price of fuel, of course, that's a significant issue, but then you've got supply chain uncertainty, and you've got potential shortages or absence of aspects of your supply chain, and that that makes it impossible to do business, potentially, or it might be it might just be that your margin is eroded so much so that you just say, Well, let's close the doors. That's our best option.

SPEAKER_01 20:45

And you are seeing that starting to happen.

SPEAKER_00 20:48

We are we are seeing that a little bit, and talking to uh talking to our insolvency practitioner friends, they are definitely seeing that. Yes.

SPEAKER_01 20:57

Yeah. Because we talked earlier about exit route planning, yeah, MBO, trade sale, employee ownership. A fourth option which we went many years without really seeing, and then we saw a f well a good few of them, which is people doing a solvent liquidation of the business to basically just closing the doors, selling the assets off, selling bits of the business off for what they could get for it, and walking away with a pile of money.

SPEAKER_00 21:27

That is a very real proposition right now. It's always been there on the table, and sometimes it gets accelerated because you you have a tax change coming up, or you have a change of government, or whatever. So, yes, that happens. But this is different. This is one that's being triggered by economic uncertainty or supply chain difficulties, or sim simply price. You would there is no longer the ability to make profit doing what they're doing. So let's close the doors before it gets to the where we have to, somebody forces us to. That is happening.

SPEAKER_01 22:04

AI. To what degree is AI becoming is it a is it an opportunity or is it a threat?

SPEAKER_00 22:11

Well it's both. It is both, of course. It it's most definitely a threat to those who are not harnessing it and to everyone within, I suppose, the the white collar world. It's it's a threat to the number of people that you need to employ to do what you did before. It's particularly a difficulty for our next generation for for mildren and your children a bit older, but my son is 17, going to be going into the work workplace this autumn. The number of opportunities for that generation is rapidly diminishing because of AI. And also the effect of the national insurance rise and national minimum wage increases which have had a significant chilling effect.

SPEAKER_01 23:06

I mean to some degree is this just the way it's always been so for example you'll remember I think it was back in 2014 again when I was managing partner of Daphne's we had a long-serving member of staff in the personal tax team retire. And she made a lovely little goodbye speech in the boardroom and we had a a gathering and she what she was saying is that you know the world had changed a lot since she first started working for Daphne's which I think was back in 1974. And at that stage I think she said the firm had something like well the Coventry office had 12 typists or something like that. Something like that. Because every single letter every single memo every tax return every computation every set of accounts everything would have to be manually typed. And of course all those typists well back in 2014 I think we might do we have any typists that we might have had one a receptionist that did a bit of typing one yeah but today businesses don't have typists all these people have been replaced by computers and by printers and by photocopiers and back then fax machines and so on. Today so much more is being replaced by AI.

SPEAKER_00 24:23

That's right and and yes it has always been that way technology will disrupt industries particularly professions but this one feels a little bit more radical. Yep. This one feels like it it's turning the whole profession the whole of all professions on their heads to to make us say well either we find a way to make this more efficient using AI or we get price out of out of the market.

SPEAKER_01 24:55

Are you finding though that people are coming to you with a question but b with ai they've already researched it they've already got a little report that they've done for themselves that says what they want how they want to do it. They already know the answer. So for many many years people have come to you for your knowledge but now they've got the knowledge but what they don't have is the wisdom of what to do with it. That's exactly how are you mixing those up then? How are you melding that all together?

SPEAKER_00 25:26

Yeah for for that sort of scenario the higher level planning type work our ability to bring something to to the table is no is not really diminished. What we're finding is as you say the the client has pre pre-qualified their question so they've they've got it down to a point where they they have some of the answers but not the whole picture but that doesn't change how I advise them because I still need to I still need to analyse the situation and come up with the solution that best fits their situation and then we need to implement it. So that doesn't really change things that much for me other than the client perceiving that they know more of the the more of the answers and more of what I know and perhaps the value of what I deliver might be eroded in their minds. In reality it shouldn't be but that may be an issue that we that we start to encounter.

SPEAKER_01 26:33

So one of the questions that we like to ask people on the Three Steps Ahead podcast is what piece of advice would you have for business leaders today to help them get three steps ahead in 2026?

SPEAKER_00 26:48

I think my number one piece of advice right now is to remember that we are human and humans like humans and if you want to stay a step ahead in the AI world you really need to accentuate your human characteristics. You need to remember that you're not just going to deliver an AI piece of advice to to the client you're going to use ai as a research tool but you're then going to personalize it. Otherwise the client is just going to read it and say well I could have got that myself or I could have gone to any any Tom Dick and Harry and and received that advice.

SPEAKER_01 27:31

So what you're saying is embrace AI but that human element is key.

SPEAKER_00 27:36

Totally and and in order to in order to make AI really work for you I think we all have to upskill ourselves as as humans. Doesn't mean that you we all have to be a tax advisor of 35 years experience. It means that we all have to be open to learning and open to be curious to to want to expand our minds.

SPEAKER_01 28:03

Today with AR are you saying that it's the individual who really needs to invest in themselves in getting their head around what AI can do outside of work so that they can have some sort of idea as to how AI can assist them inside work.

SPEAKER_00 28:17

That's exactly what I'm saying but I'm also very well aware that we as as business leaders need to be looking at AI and assessing where AI can really assist us as a firm in streamlining our processes. So yeah it's it's it's a two pronged attack. A final question for you Brian you reading any good books at the moment I've usually got three or four books on the go at the same time so I'll what's your book of the year so far then's a good question.

SPEAKER_01 28:49

The book I'm thoroughly enjoying at the moment and it's a book called Hunt War Hunt the Bismarck I do really enjoy a World War II military history book.

SPEAKER_00 29:00

Yeah we've all got our niches haven't we I I'm not sure I want to share my my particular guilty pleasure because you might think I'm a lunatic but I like to investigate the unexplained or keep my mind open to the unexplained. Those of us that have looked at that and thought well that's all a bit you know weirdy beardy it's it's nothing of any consequence I I just I just do what I do and and I'll get on in life I don't think that's any longer enough. I think you have to be open to the possibilities of improving yourself and that book would be a great starting place. It's called Mindset but it's all about the growth mindset. You know you've got the fixed mindset and the growth mindset. Well the fixed mindset is what we grew up with in our generation everyone had a fixed mindset back in those days but science has learnt an awful lot since then and has proved that our brains are plastic. There is neuroplasticity which means you can grow and develop throughout your life so the growth mindset just gives you that ability to expand your mind basically.

SPEAKER_01 30:36

Brian thank you very much for being my guest today it's been brilliant catching up with you and hopefully you'll join us again at some point in a few months' time be interested to see what the world looks like when we uh when we get together again well I keep my fingers crossed that uh there might be some radical changes in the White House that might improve yes agreed and I think I think change is coming what it's going to look like and what the collateral damage from that is goodness only knows.

SPEAKER_00 31:02

It's been a pleasure thank you Martin for inviting me.

SPEAKER_01 31:05

We will catch up soon so cheers Brian. Cheers Martin