Accountant - do I really need one?

welnik

Self employed a number of years and have always used an accountant. I have a programme called Sage which I use for all my finances, but ideally I would like to utilise it and do my own accounts. My accountant seems to think you need to have trained as an accountant to do a proper job, but at the end of the day, surely if im telling the tax man what my turnover is, less my business expenses, Im not going to be far wrong. Worse case scenario is that I overpay tax! The profit and loss account is simple but I get so a bit stuck on where some of the figures come from on the balance sheet. I can sort out depreciation on assets and stuff like that, but when I add assets, I do find that a bit confusing. I think the problem is, my accountant likes to blind me with science and talk to me as if I am an accountant myself.

Any advice/tips?

welnik

Thanks for that. I used to give the accountant all the bank statements and receipts, invoices etc until we had a £500 bill the once. When we asked how he calculated his charge he said it was 1% of the turnover. I then decided to give him lists of expenditure and income, movements in my assets and copies of bank statements over year start and end etc. This halved his bill, but I bet it takes him about 3 hours tops to do it. He adds £50.00 on for completing the tax return.

He is really meticulous. I have decided to seek the services of someone new. I am a tradesman so supply goods and services. Im not VAT registered or do I employ staff. I did do a book keeping course about 15 years ago so have a good basic knowledge.

It would be handy if there were spreadsheets out there that you can just complete, hand over to your accountant and wait for a set of accounts!

Cook_County

You are very lucky if he only charges £50 for completing your tax return.

He has to buy the paper and toner, print out a copy for him, a copy for you to keep and a copy for you to sign. This lots comes to around a fiver or so in postage costs. He then has to spend time checking it as well as making sure you know about the payments due on 31 January and 31 July. Then he spends time checking statements of account half a dozen times a year. All in all this is remarkable value.

Qualified accountants do not tend to charge percentages of turnover. May I ask what qualifications he has?

If he is blinding you with jargon then you have two choices.
1. You call his bluff and ask him to repeat and translate EVERYTHING saying you will not pay more for him to do what you paid for in the first place, or
2. You find someone else to compare with who you may get on better with...

shabani

If you give your accountant a whole load of invoices and reciepts, and the accountant has to sort it all out by himself, then this will cost you a lot.
The best thing to do especially of you are a tradesman is to put all your income and expenditure into an excel spreadsheet. If you talk to the accountant, most will give you a template to use for free which they use themselves. I have seen to tradesman with the same income and expenditure but you may find that one of them is paying three or four times more than the other.
To reduce your accountants bill, you can do the following:-
*Put your income and expenditure onto a spreadsheet showing the date or week expenditure incurred. If some of the expenditure is not easly recognisable please put an indication of what the expenditure was for.
* Also put your weekly reciepts in an envelope and sort alll your vreciepts on a weekly basis. This makes it easier for your accountant to then check the recipts if he wants to verify something. A lot of tme is wasted looking for reciepts which are sorted by month!
Also remember that it is not the accountant who actually does the donkey work but a trainee.

innovate

If you are a bit "numbers-savvy" and have got the odd couple of hours to spare on your tax, you may well be better off doing your own tax return. You'll most likely get very helpful (surprisingly!) advice from your tax office, without losing any advantages that only your accountant would/could tell you about.

If you aren't absolutely sure you

1. understand the taxation legislation (allowances, excemptions, deadlines etc)
2. trust your HMRC office

then paying £50 or so a year for an Accountant sounds like a bargain. That is, if you trust him (or her)

jobbingmusician

Wouldn't it be useful if someone had a website with a list of useful tax exemptions and things you can claim back on tax on it?

Just think, this list could be on a website called - ooo I don't know - maybe something like the 'Money Saving Website for Experts' - that's a bit of a mouthful so maybe it could be shortened a bit??????

Maybe it could be a thread on a messageboard, something like that, or even a brownish-maroonish click box called 'tax saving' somewhere down the LH side?

*jobbingmusician sits back and waits for other MSE's to point out what she's missed* :rudolf:

jobbingmusician

gizmoleeds wrote:

I can't see it

That's what I thought.

There are useful stickies at the top of the tax forum, but we could do with a nice thread or even click box to keep everything neatly together - and there are invaluable hints out there, like the washing allowance for uniforms! :j