Accounting + GST Solutions

About Us

Chris Ward BCA, CA, CMA, MBA
Director/CEO of AGSTS

Chris has had a distinguished career in commerce having held senior financial and management positions with companies such as Telecom, NZ Wines & Spirits and a number of successful private companies.

As a senior financial consultant for KPMG he undertook significant assignments for NZ listed companies, subsidiaries of large international companies, the two largest local bodies in the Auckland area, and many other private companies.

Chris is a Chartered Accountant and has completed a Masters of Business Administration (MBA). An MBA is an intensive two year post graduate degree in business. It aims to give experienced specialists a broad grounding in all facets of business management.

As a consequence of his experience Chris has a special understanding of the issues that entrepreneurs and business owners face, allowing him to translate observations into practical and useful business recommendations to help businesses prosper and grow.

For the last 11 years Chris has operated a successful financial advisory business. He has recently sold this business to pursue a more varied working life consulting in the areas of investment, trusts and business strategy.

Chris' specialises in strategic planning and the structured review of business activities including the use of trusts and other vehicles to maximise shareholder wealth. This helps businesses become smarter and more efficient and better placed to meet the challenges of the rapidly changing environment.

His experience means you can rest assured that his advice is no pie-in-the-sky fantasy. Chris has the capacity to create value for clients. In his words "If you're dealing with me I'll be putting all of my experience to work to create value for you."

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Chris Heaslip M Tax (Hons), B Com, GradDipCom
Consultant to AGSTS

Chris has a Masters in Taxation from the University of Auckland where he was taught by some of the leading tax authorities in New Zealand. He has spent the last six years learning the New Zealand tax system in order to bring his clients cutting edge ideas and a knowledge of tax which is rarely available to small business owners.

Over that time he has seen and dealt with just about every type of business you can imagine, and has worked on every kind of tax question, problem, challenge and opportunity.

Chris began his career in tax with the Inland Revenue Department as a tax investigator. During his time at the IRD Chris conducted a large number of audits on small, medium and large sized businesses, gaining a thorough understanding of the tax system in the process. This gave him the opportunity to observe how large businesses structure their affairs to manage their compliance obligations.

Wanting to learn more about corporate tax and how it is structured, Chris spent the next eighteen months working for one of the largest accounting and tax advisory firms in the world. His clients included Fortune 500 companies, automobile manufacturers, computer manufacturers, and some of the New Zealand and the world's leading service firms, giving him the opportunity to see how multinational corporates approach their tax obligations, and to learn the structures and processes they use to minimise the tax they pay.

Having worked both sides of the fence, Chris realised there was a great divide between the expensive tax advice being offered to large companies, and that offered to smaller businesses. AGSTS was established to close that gap, bringing premium tax advice, usually reserved for multi-millionaires and multi-nationals, to ordinary people who have been throwing away their money by paying more tax than they are legally required to.

All of this knowledge and experience means saving you time and money, giving you peace of mind that the experts are advising you on your tax obligations.