Self Assessment - to Accountant or not Accountant?

Tebheag

Hi
Sounds like you know what you are doing, in this day and age most of the information is easy to find out by yourself. What i would strongly recommend is that if you do go down the route of an accountant make sure you go with someone who knows there stuff they should be an expert on tax so many people call themselfs accountants now and yes they do have letters after their name but they may never deal with tax. I do a few tax returns but refer any of the large earners to tax specialists as in reality they should not cost you anything as what you pay them should be saved in what tax you may pay.
Good Luck

John_Pierpoint

Pennywise wrote: »

If you do your own electrics, I hope you follow the guidelines and standards. It may work for you, but pity the poor sods who buy your house if you've not followed them.

I bought my house from a keen DIYer and everything looked fine superficially, but we soon discovered that he'd botched putting in security lights, extra sockets and lighting. He'd completely messed up the circuits so that some sockets in the same room were on the upstairs socket circuit and some were on the downstairs socket circuit - then there were some sockets which he'd wired in to a lighting circuit, no isolators for the bathroom shower, nor wall heater nor even the cooker! Every time we had to do anything, we had to shut down power to the whole house because we couldn't risk what he'd done. Eventually, we had to bite the bullet and have the whole house rewired professionally because we started getting fuses constantly blowing for no obvious reason.

The same idiot had added extra radiators to the central heating system and likewise, nothing but problems as he's altered the natural flow of the water around the house and now it's impossible to have all radiators working - we can literally shut one down in the front room upstairs and it makes one downstairs in the back room work!

I have no problem with people doing things themselves but only if they research properly and do the job properly, and are willing to accept that they don't know what they don't know. Sadly, too many people just bodge it and hope for the best.

It is actually a criminal offence to do your own electrics now, but it was not when I did mine.

It is a bit like doing a tax return, it has all become a massive complexity of regulations.

However did I survive my 1960s upbringing in a house with fuses?

How did accountants ever manage to make a living with a tax system that had no CGT, No Corporation Tax, No VAT and a government that scraped by spending only 27% of the GDP.

Is taking over the tax affairs of a client from another accountants bit like inheriting a house wiring system?