Citywealth Leaders List, 60 seconds interview – Paul Davidoff, Kingsley Napley

Date: 04 Nov 2026

Karen Jones

This week’s 60 seconds Citywealth Leaders List interview features Paul Davidoff, Partner, Private Client, Kingsley Napley. Paul advises UK and international individuals, families, trustees and beneficiaries in relation to a wide range of Private Client matters, including taxation, UK and offshore trusts and other asset-holding structures, as well as both UK and cross-border wills and succession planning and personal tax planning.

Tell Citywealth readers a bit about your role.

I am an International Private Client partner at Kingsley Napley.  My clients are typically wealthy individuals and families (and those that manage their wealth, such as trustees and family offices), whose affairs extend beyond the UK – or, perhaps one might say, whose affairs extend into the UK.  They come to me for help managing their UK tax exposure or arranging their succession planning across the various jurisdictions they are involved with.  Another specific part of my practice is all aspects of trusts, not only how to manage them, but also how they can used, changed or disbanded. These areas are far from straightforward, and my aim is to help my clients navigate our complex tax legislation and obscure legal terminology, so that they can understand what their position is and what their options are.

What does a typical day look like for you?

One of the reasons I enjoy this area of law is that every individual and every family is different and this means that, even if their situation may look the same as the next person’s, what they actually want or need is likely to be different.  I could be helping a couple plan for a return to the UK after some years of working abroad, or putting Wills in place for them to ensure that their wealth is protected for the benefit of multiple generations, or later explaining to family members how they and their children can expect to benefit from their family’s trusts, or advising foreign-based trustees about how the new tax rules will affect them and their beneficiaries in relation to a trust that has been running for many years.  In many international cases, I will be looking at double taxation agreements and liaising with foreign advisers in order to determine how a person will be taxed, especially where both the UK and another country want to tax them.  Most of my clients with assets in the UK also need to make a new Will or Lasting Powers of Attorney, and that too can mean co-ordinating with advisers overseas.

Tell us about some recent, interesting client instructions/requests you have received.

I advised a wealthy couple, one of whom was from the UK originally (he was also a lawyer), but the other not.  They had moved to Caribbean many years ago and intended to continue living there.  However, they wanted to move to the UK for a few years while their child attended school here.  This has been a bit of a theme amongst my expat clients recently.  Because their backgrounds were not the same as each other, this threw up a number of challenging issues (both practical and tax-focused).  Having worked through all of that, the law changed and I had to completely review the advice which, thankfully, proved to be to their advantage.  It was my first example of how the replacement of the old “non-dom regime” can be very beneficial for expats looking to come back to the UK (whether for a short time, or for good).

Another unusual instruction came from a brother and sister in the 20s who had just discovered that there was a seven-figure trust fund set aside for them but a distant relative many years previously.  They had known nothing about it until shortly before they came to me. 

Then there was the client who called me from Heathrow saying that he was being told he had to pay VAT on the £120,000 ring he had just bought for his wife on the continent ….

What challenges do your clients face and how are you helping your clients to overcome them?

One of the main concerns is that the “tax goalposts” keep moving – as indeed when Labour replaced the non-dom regime from April 2025.  My clients want help navigating this ever-changing landscape, which seem to be coming thick and fast at the moment.  They want to be able to arrange their financial and business affairs in practical and tax-efficient manner, but also in a way that is sufficiently flexible that they do not become stuck if new tax rules mean that their carefully laid plans will leave them and their families worse off.  In many cases, the solution which my clients choose is to leave the UK, so I am frequently advising them how to bring their UK tax residence to an end (and how to avoid falling back into it again).

Quite aside from the international aspect, my clients are finding that, without doing anything different, they and their families are going to suffer a substantially increased tax burden, without apparently any good reason: this year’s reduction in “Business Relief” and “Agricultural Property Relief” and the application of inheritance tax to pensions (from this coming April) are two such examples. And there are more.  For my clients who own substantial businesses, there is a real worry over how their family will find the cash to pay the inheritance tax when they die – even if they are allowed to pay it gradually over 10 years.  It would not be surprising to see many family-owned business being sold or simply being wound up, because no other realistic way can be found to fund the tax. That said, there are some steps that can be taken: they suit some, but certainly not everyone.

Are there any top of mind themes for you or your clients?

As already mentioned, from a UK tax standpoint the question is frequently “what will the government do next”?  It seems that, in the lead-up to recent Budgets, many wealthy UK-based clients start to wonder what the point of remaining in the UK is.  We can all think of some good reasons to stay, but when it appears that an increasingly large part of a person’s hard-earned wealth will go to the Treasury, whether by restriction of reliefs on capital gains tax and inheritance tax, increased income tax rates or just the continued high levels of inheritance tax exposure, it is no surprise that the consequence is a desire to move to another country with a more welcoming tax system. 

Inheritance tax on pensions is the next big change coming up imminently.  We do now have a little more clarity about how some aspects of that will work and the procedures involved, but there is a general feeling amongst clients that it does not seem right to have been told for over 20 years that money that they put into pensions will have particular tax treatment, only for the government to say that they are going to take an additional 40% of anything that is left over.

What is your proudest professional achievement?

There isn’t one specific thing that I would point to, but I do know that I feel a particular sense of pride when someone comes to me for advice and says that they were recommended by a previous client of mine.  It is important to me that not only do I give good advice, but that that my clients feel sufficiently confident in me as an adviser that they will recommend me to their friends or family.

What do you consider to be the most important attributes for a leader?

Thinking about those whom I have considered to be the best leaders during my career, they were the ones who we all considered to be knowledgeable in their field – they knew what they were doing – and were also encouraging when things were difficult.  When something was not right, there was no finger-wagging, just clear direction, without being aggressive.  Also, a key part of it was to be approachable.  It is important that those in your team feel able to speak to you, especially if something is not going right: the sooner the leader knows about an issue, the sooner it can be addressed.

Who do you most admire and why?

Anyone who can make something out of nothing!  I am thinking in particular of a couple of my friends who have set up businesses – neither of them lawyers (although one is in the legal sphere).  Having specific technical ability in the field that you are in does not necessarily mean that you can create and run a business, with all the strategic business acumen and people management that is required along with that – and persuading people that they should use your business rather than anyone else.  To some extent, that is what we do as partners of a law firm, but we do have the benefit of “standing on the shoulders of giants” when we join an existing firm.  To start one’s own firm from scratch is, in my view, something different altogether.

Where was the last place you travelled to for work or pleasure?

I have just come back from a work trip with a colleague to Malta. I was last there about four years ago, speaking at the STEP conference, but I have one or two very interesting live files at the moment involving people in Malta and it was a good excuse to visit again after several years a meet a number of local advisers, whom I have mostly ever seen in the UK.  Malta has some very interesting opportunities for people looking to relocate, not only on the immigration side but also in relation to tax.

If you weren’t in this industry, what else might you be doing?

My first career was, somewhat unexpectedly, in IT, developing computer systems.  I had not studied law at university, but then I had not studied computer science either! The job I really wanted was at GCHQ.  I had two very close calls for the role I was after and was eventually offered a different role which I decided to let slide.  I then saw the light during a stint of jury service, which I almost didn’t do, and a year later I started at The College of Law (as it was then) in Guildford. 

How do you relax after a long day?

If we have the energy, and if I don’t finish too late, my ideal evening would be to go dancing with my wife.  There are still a few places around where you can find swing dancing (mainly Lindy Hop, but also one or two other dances thrown in there as well) – last time it was at the 100 Club on Oxford Street.

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