AN FSB member and enterprenuer who came to the UK from Poland in 2005 for a challenge in this year planning to take her accountancy business to the next level by branching out in management consultancy.

Entrepreneur Catherine Machanlinski, 37, graduated from the University of Szczecin in 1996 with a Masters degree in economics.

After graduating she began working as a product and sales manager in the cleaning equipment industry, quickly making her mark and heading a team of dozens by the age of 25.

In 2005 she travelled to the UK and was soon in business working as an FD for a business in the UK’s construction sector.

Despite being pregnant with her second child she began a course offered by HMRC to familiarise herself with the UK tax system. In 2008, following the collapse of the construction industry due to the credit crunch, she started to offer accountancy services for clients having become CIMA qualified, all the while juggling single-motherhood and work commitments.

She started Prevail Accountancy in her adopted home town of Rochdale in 2010, took on her firstmember of staff in 2012, and from initially working at it part-time now has an £80,000 turnover business, with a growth plan to hit the half million mark by 2018.

She specialises in accountancy work for Polish business owners.

So how did she find setting up a business here in the UK?

“It was really easy, I had no major problems at all,” she said. “Once I had the premises here it was just a case of putting in the hard work to win the clients.”

And her thoughts on the UK tax system? “The only thing that my clients have issues with is RTI. They don’t appreciate how fast you have to turn things around especially

when paying weekly, but nobody has been fined yet.

“I think the wider UK tax system isn’t actually that complicated once you understand it.

“I would say though that it’s not entirely logical, and I think that’s where people struggle with it sometimes.”