This week, an accountant was excluded from her second professional body in three years..
here's what the Apostle scandal tells us about our profession, and why it matters more than you think
Our profession has a gap, and this week it made the news.. again.
A note before we start: this piece is about publicly reported events. Everything I reference comes from published sources: official professional body statements, Companies House filings, court records, confirmed police statements, and BBC broadcast journalism. Where something is my opinion, I’ve stated so clearly.
At the time of writing, a police investigation is ongoing.
This week, an accountant was excluded from her second professional body in three years. If you follow the industry press, or socials, you’ll have seen it. If you didn’t, here’s what you need to know, not because of the individual, but because of what this exposes about our profession.
Let me give you the facts as they’ve been publicly reported.
Zoe Goodchild (also known as Zoe Rosborough) founded Apostle Accounting in Stowmarket in 2012. By 2018-2019, the firm had pivoted heavily into tax rebate claims, filing self-assessment repayment claims on behalf of hundreds of ordinary PAYE taxpayers.
According to publicly reported analysis and the subsequent BBC investigation, those claims were filed under a single vague entry: “Allowable Expenses.” No breakdown, no receipts requested, no evidence base documented. Then, in late 2022, those clients started receiving letters from HMRC, compliance checks, repayment demands, with interest and with penalties.
One client, Lee Osborne, told his story publicly on BBC One’s Rip Off Britain. He had received a £14,000 rebate. He was left having to repay £21,000. He was not an isolated case. By 2023, Suffolk Police and the Eastern Region Special Operations Unit (ERSOU) had received nearly 200 complaints. Over 20 MPs met with HMRC after being flooded by letters from their constituents. Apostle Accounting went into voluntary liquidation in October 2023. A liquidator report from August 2025 showed the firm owed £349,184, including £202,754 to HMRC.
A First Tier Tribunal ruling, published in June 2025, found on the evidence before it that Apostle had deliberately submitted a false tax return. The police investigation, as of this week, remains active and ongoing.
Here’s where it gets more uncomfortable.
Before the firm collapsed, Goodchild was a member of the Institute of Certified Bookkeepers (ICB). In 2023, the ICB excluded her and fined Apostle £40,000 for non-compliance with anti-money laundering regulations. The ICB itself described it as an unusually high fine. That fine was never paid. Apostle went into liquidation.
Before Apostle was liquidated, Goodchild had already set up a new firm, Innovate Accountancy Limited, incorporated in 2022. She joined a different professional body: the Institute of Accountants and Bookkeepers (IAB). She continued operating. She continued building an online profile, posting on TikTok as “The Awake Accountant”, and more recently describing herself on LinkedIn as the “Cashflow Queen.”
The IAB did not act for two years.
Just yesterday, the IAB excluded her and fined her £12,656 plus costs. The published finding: “dishonesty; professional misconduct and non-declaration of disciplinary action on membership renewal.” Tax consultant Paul Rosser, who has tracked this case publicly for years, said this in the trade press this week: “Why Ms Rosborough was allowed to join the IAB in the first place, and why it’s taken them two years after her expulsion from the ICB was reported to take disciplinary action, is unclear at present.”
This is not a story about one firm.
This is a story about a gap in how our profession is governed.
Right now, in the UK, there is nothing legally stopping someone from calling themselves an accountant or a tax adviser. No mandatory qualification, no single regulator with oversight across the sector. No automatic information-sharing when a member is excluded from one professional body and walks into another.
Research from the AAT found that roughly one in three accountants and tax advisers operate with no professional body affiliation at all. Those individuals account for the majority of agent-related complaints to HMRC. One of the victims in the Apostle case described it as “This sector isn’t properly regulated, it’s basically the Wild West with calculators.”
Here’s the bit most people aren’t saying out loud.
When stories like this land on national television, the public doesn’t distinguish between the bad actor and the profession. They just think: can I trust my accountant?
That question lands in your inbox. It shows up in your client conversations. It’s in the room when a new prospect is deciding whether to sign. You don’t have to have done anything wrong for it to affect you. That’s how reputational damage in a sector works, it distributes. The only answer is to make your standards so visible there is no ambiguity. Not assumed. Not implied.
Visible.
Change is coming. But let’s be honest about what it will and won’t fix.
The Finance Act 2026 introduces mandatory HMRC registration for all tax advisers who interact with HMRC on behalf of clients, beginning 18 May 2026. For the first time, there will be a legal requirement to register, meet minimum standards, and maintain compliant tax affairs. This is progress.
But the ICAEW has warned publicly that high-risk actors are likely to find workarounds, particularly by using clients’ own login credentials to file returns, making the adviser invisible to HMRC. Tax Policy Associates, writing this week, called these “ghost preparers.” It’s already a known model in the US.
And there are legitimate concerns, which the ICAEW has raised, that the regime could, in its current form, give HMRC disproportionate power to suspend a compliant firm’s registration over a professional disagreement rather than genuine misconduct.
For a small practice, a registration suspension is not an inconvenience. It is the end of the business. The direction of travel is right. The details still need scrutiny. Both things are true.
What this means for you as a practice owner.
1. Your clients’ trust is earned at sector level before they ever find you.
When a story makes national TV, it shapes how the public feels about accountants in general. Your job is to be so clearly, demonstrably doing this right that there is never a question. That means documentation, that means AML compliance, that means professional body membership that is current and clean.
2. Professional body membership is not the same as quality assurance, and your clients don’t know the difference.
Apostle’s clients trusted them because they looked professional. Good website. Good reviews. The letters after your name don’t do your reputation management for you. You have to explain what they mean. And then you have to live them, visibly.
3. The HMRC registration requirement in May is not a box-tick.
It is the first time a legal, public record of registered advisers will exist. The firms that are registered will be distinguishable from those that aren’t. Use this moment. Tell your clients about it. Be explicit about being compliant before they have to wonder.
4. Your AML process matters more than you think it does.
The ICB’s £40,000 fine was not for the tax rebate scheme. It was for AML failures, lack of due diligence, no documented client evidence base. If your AML process is not robust, the Apostle case is a clear picture of where that path leads. Not just for clients. For you.
A final thought.
One of the victims in this case spent two years of his personal life helping other people navigate the fallout. Talking to MPs. Coordinating with journalists. Giving police statements. Going to small claims court, alone, against a barrister. He eventually settled with HMRC after a tax consultant helped him pro bono.
He wrote, publicly: “It’s staggering how long it takes for the system to catch and punish fraud or even gross incompetence, if it does at all.”
That is the lived experience of a client who trusted a professional with his tax affairs.
We are the profession. The answer doesn’t sit entirely with regulators, and we cannot outsource it there and then be surprised when the answer is slow.
The firms building with integrity, proper AML, current membership, clean governance, documented processes, are not doing it because they’re scared of being caught. They are doing it because this is what it means to be a professional and in 2026, being able to prove that clearly and publicly is not a nice-to-have.
It is the whole point.
If this has made you think about someone in your network, a fellow practice owner, a colleague who keeps putting off their AML review, someone who hasn’t thought about what May 2026 means for their firm yet, please share it. These conversations are how our profession gets better.
Rachel 🫶🏻
Wow! What a thought provoking article!
I was in a program/group with her, I used to think wow shes doing well. Reminder to remember social media is not always reality. Good article 🤓