The best tax lawyers in 2025
For UHNW clients, tax is not just a bill: it’s a blueprint for how their wealth could move, grow, and endure for generations. Having a strong lawyer at the heart of one’s tax advisory team isn’t just helpful: it’s essential.
The Spear’s 2025 Tax Lawyers index showcases the UK’s top tax advisers, selected for their ability to counsel on everything from inheritance tax and capital gains tax to international structuring and estate planning. These advisers are trusted by some of the wealthiest families across the globe who have complex financial portfolios, cross-border assets and live in jurisdictions with evolving legislation.
By combining deep expertise with discretion and foresight, the featured lawyers are leading voices in their industry who not only understand the rules but know how to apply them in ways that preserve wealth and ringfence assets against potential future risks.
‘I translate complex areas of the law into plain English and assist my clients with navigating their way through life-changing events, certainly in tax terms, from death, divorce, relocation and succession to the sale of family businesses,’ says Camilla Wallace of Wedlake Bell.
The Labour government’s changes to UK tax policies, targeting inheritance tax, VAT on school fees and non-domiciled individuals’ ability to remain in the UK, have left many wealthy families feeling like ‘low hanging fruit’ for HMRC, one top lawyer tells Spear’s. As of 2025, many lawyers report that clients worry that the government will reform business protection relief (BPR) in the next year. As a result, legal teams have been stretched to capacity as they help clients navigate the reforms, while an increasing number of HNWs are relocating to more favourable jurisdictions like Monaco and Dubai.
Advisers in the UK tell Spear’s they are helping clients explore mitigation strategies such as gifting business shares, using Family Investment Companies (FICs), and establishing Family Limited Partnerships (FLPs). ‘Using a FIC is a way of giving some value away while still retaining a degree of control over children and their future spouses’ access to it,’ says Emily Osborne of Fladgate. ‘It’s a good way to preempt changes to BPR in the future.’
Among the new additions is Charlie Fowler of Collyer Bristow, whose dual expertise in tax and immigration allows him to advise clients holistically. When Spear’s spoke to him, he was working on tax guidance at the point of arrival for a billionaire tech entrepreneur for whom he had successfully secured a talent visa. ‘It’s fairly unusual that people advise on both [tax and immigration law] but it is really helpful,’ he says. ‘It means that I can make sure I’m giving the right advice at the right time.’
This year’s index also reflects the growing internationalisation of tax law. Jordan Ellis of Stephenson Harwood was among the first UK private client lawyers to establish a presence in Dubai, contributing to the development of DIFC legislation. His practice now focuses on helping clients exit the UK tax system efficiently, often in tandem with corporate structuring and long-term succession planning.
The advisers featured in this year’s index are not only responding to these challenges: they’re anticipating them. Whether advising on succession, relocation, or the sale of family businesses, they offer forward-looking solutions tailored to the needs of the world’s wealthiest individuals.
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Methodology
Each year, the Spear’s Research Unit reassesses and refreshes its rankings of the leading providers in each sector by gathering data from and about the advisers and firms themselves, assessing submission forms, collating nominations, carrying out peer reviews, reviewing data from third-party sources, gathering references and recommendations, canvassing experts and conducting hundreds of interviews.
Advisers are evaluated using a proprietary scoring system that assigns different weightings to certain attributes. These scores feed directly into each new set of rankings in the Spear’s Indices. Each of these indices are published first online (according to the research calendar) and then in print. Print publication takes the form of the annual Spear’s 500 directory, which includes the top advisers in every index.
[See also: A guide to the Spear’s 500: Everything you need to know]
Each featured adviser is profiled on spears500.com. The site allows users to search the Spear’s database of more than 4,000 entities to find one (or more) to meet their specific requirements by filtering for specific attributes such as an adviser’s location, their specialist expertise and information about their client base.
The best tax lawyers: some names to know
Robert Brodrick
- Focus: Succession, tax and estate planning
- Position: Partner and chair
- Firm: Payne Hicks Beach
Robert Brodrick relishes his role as chair of Payne Hicks Beach’s management board. But the high-flying private client partner insists he is still very much client-facing.
In his own practice, and as part of his role in guiding the strategy of Payne Hicks Beach as a whole, Brodrick is dedicated to advising clients on much more than their tax obligations. ‘The role has evolved over the last 20 years from being very much tax focused in the late 1990s, to being a mixture of tax and succession and family governance advice,’ he tells Spear’s.
Read Robert Brodrick’s full profile on Spears500.com
Robert Macro
- Focus: UK and international tax planning
- Position: Partner and head of international private client
- Firm: Druces
‘A gentleman, a genius and a valued adviser’ is how one leading industry figure describes Robert Macro, who has set up several family offices for clients with net worth in excess of $2 billion.
The partner in Druces’ private wealth team has also been praised for his innovative use of investment strategy and has highlighted the need for family offices and offshore providers to address the misreporting around the use of international financial centres.
Read Robert Macro’s full profile on Spears500.com
Xavier Nicholas
- Focus: Succession planning and family governance
- Position: Partner and head of private clients
- Firm: Forsters
Xavier Nicholas is a partner and head of private client at Forsters in London, leading an impressive team on matters of personal taxation, succession planning, trusts and family governance.
His international practice includes UK/US families and individuals who wish to come to the UK, implementing planning for potential residents and UK resident non-doms. He has considerable experience of and skill in establishing wealth-holding structures such as trusts, companies and partnerships for assets and wealth held in the UK and other jurisdictions.
Read Xavier Nicholas’s full profile on Spears500.com
Matthew Gamman
- Focus: UHNW trust structures
- Position: Director
- Firm: Cone Marshall
Matthew Gamman is a managing director at Cone Marshall. Based in London, he oversees operations for its UK trusts provider, advising internationally minded UHNW clients and wealthy families with ‘bespoke and complex’ tax planning requirements.
‘Our expertise is in advising on, establishing and managing structures to hold international property for our clients, to protect their assets and provide for a family’s stability, governance and succession,’ the firm says.
Read Matthew Gamman’s full profile on Spears500.com
Ben Rosen
- Focus: Complex wealth structures
- Position: Partner and head of private wealth
- Firm: Quastels
Historically, Quastels partner Ben Rosen has focused his advice on HNW individuals and their families who are seeking to move to the UK, handling their pre-arrival planning and post-arrival tax structuring. However, given the changes to the UK’s tax regime, including inheritance tax, he has increasingly advised clients seeking to leave the UK.
Rosen, who works with clients on property investments, trusts and family investment companies, tells Spear’s that his strength is not just in the tax expertise he provides, but in making complex and often emotional issues easier for his clients.
Read Ben Rosen’s full profile on Spears500.com
Julia Cox
Charles Russell Speechlys partner Julia Cox is a personal tax and trusts lawyer based in Cheltenham.
Cox primarily acts for those who are UK resident, and she advises her clients on a vast range of matters including tax and succession planning, wills, trusts, family governance, business and philanthropy. Her broad practice has earned her a loyal UHNW and HNW client base, some of whom have been with her for decades. What is her secret?
Read Julia Cox’s full profile on Spears500.com
Emily Osborne
- Focus: International tax
- Position: Partner
- Firm: Fladgate
‘One of my favourite things about being a private client lawyer is that there’s a real technical side to tax, but there’s also a massive human element and it requires a lot of emotional intelligence,’ says Emily Osborne, a partner at Fladgate.
Osborne’s practice covers issues including international tax and private wealth advice (often involving advising HNW families on moving to the UK); the use of wealth preservation structures (such as offshore trusts, foundations and companies); and the reporting of beneficial ownership under various global initiatives.
Read Emily Osborne’s full profile on Spears500.com
The best tax lawyers: the complete list
Click on the individual names to be directed to more detailed profiles of each adviser on The Spear’s 500 website. The table is ordered by ranking and then alphabetically by surname.
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