Temple Tax Chambers

David has extensive experience of both direct and indirect taxes and of the related company, securities and trust laws. However, he is best known for his advice on the income tax, PAYE, National Insurance and capital gains tax aspects of employees’ and directors’ remuneration, incentives, and all aspects of employment-related securities and employee share plans, including devising and advising upon all forms of ‘growth share’ plans; ‘joint share ownership plans’ (which were first developed by David in 2001); tax-advantaged CSOP, EMI share option, SAYE-share option and Share Incentive Plans; Employee share plans and incentives, as well as ‘partly-paid’ share schemes; arrangements for internationally-mobile employees; and all other forms of management and employee financial participation.

David qualified as a solicitor in 1980 and, after intensive training as a corporate tax lawyer at Clifford-Turner (as it then was), he moved to Pinsent & Co. in Birmingham where, having been appointed a full equity partner in 1985, he and Julian Tonks together developed what was, at one time, the largest team of tax lawyers in the UK. David and his colleagues left Pinsent Masons in 2009 to practice as Pett, Franklin & Co. LLP for 8 years until shortly before he was called to the Bar and joined Temple Tax Chambers in 2017. He was a member of the government-appointed working party responsible for the legislation governing EMI share options and Share Incentive Plans and, more recently, was a member of the share schemes working party of the Office of Tax Simplification.

David is an orchestral timpanist, having performed large-scale works in all the UK’s major concert halls and in France, Germany, Sweden, Belgium and Gibraltar.

He is Chair of the City of Birmingham Orchestral Endowment Fund and a trustee, and Chair of the Investment Committee, of the Development Fund supporting the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra and was formerly a trustee of The Birmingham Science Museum

David was, for nine years, a public member of NetworkRail and, before privatisation, a member of the statutory consumer council for the railways.