AGCO is a voice for owners of golf courses and their members, continuing to fight the unfair treatment of VAT and tax that is crippling the proprietary golf sector in the UK.

Since AGCO was formed in 1993 it has been a voice for proprietary golf in the UK in relation to tax and VAT, winning an important VAT exemption for sports players in the payment of national governing body affiliation fees, winning, through Abbotsley, an important VAT case on licenses/leases and golf courses, and being the recognised voice for the proprietary sector when the VAT Sports order was debated in Parliament and in Committee in 1999.

It acts on behalf of proprietary golf clubs and public golf courses and their members and customers who unfairly pay VAT on their sports.
AGCO is an entirely voluntary organisation. All committee members and supporters work entirely voluntarily, without receipt of expense or subsidy.

Vivien Saunders OBE is the Chairman of AGCO
Vivien was British Women’s Open Champion in 1977, the Founder and First Chairman of the Women’s Professional Golf Association, National Coach to the English Ladies’ Golf Association for 18 years and twice winner of the British Sports Coach of the Year Award. She is the owner of the Abbotsley Golf and Squash Club and the Cambridge Meridian Golf Club, both in Cambridgeshire, having been a golf course owner since 1986. Vivien has written 10 books in her own name and acted as a ghost writer for both Nick Faldo and Bernard Langer.

Vivien has degrees in psychology, business administration and tax law and qualified as a solicitor in 1981, specialising in tax law and family law. She no longer practises as a solicitor. She is a Fellow of the Chartered Management Institute and was awarded the OBE for services to golf in 1997.