Accountancy Costs for 1 Man Business

WatchingThePenniesMum

My husband is self employed and for over 10 years we have used an Accountant whose costs have now gone up to £600 per year.  Our accounts are quite straight forward and his turn over is not high and we send in our paperwork / receipts in order all detailed on a spreadsheet so there is limited work to do there and they look after the tax return etc.  Does £600 sound reasonable as my husband thinks and has done so for a long time, that he is over paying.  The Accountant is part of a Francise so perhaps this makes the costs more expensive.

Jeremy535897

No doubt someone could do it more cheaply, but it's not a totally unreasonable amount.

Grumpy_chap

WatchingThePenniesMum said:

My husband is self employed and for over 10 years we have used an Accountant whose costs have now gone up to £600 per year.  Our accounts are quite straight forward and his turn over is not high and we send in our paperwork / receipts in order all detailed on a spreadsheet so there is limited work to do there and they look after the tax return etc.  Does £600 sound reasonable as my husband thinks and has done so for a long time, that he is over paying.  The Accountant is part of a Francise so perhaps this makes the costs more expensive.

£600 sounds very fair to me.
The best way to ascertain whether this is fair, and satisfy yourselves, is to obtain a competitive quote from another local Accountant.  Select based on recommendation.
The Accountant really needs to do all the annual accounts, return, etc all within one working day and that will, no doubt, be spread in more than one event through the year. 

macman

Probably billing at £200 per hour, so does not seem unreasonable at all.
And you should be able to offset a large part of it as a business expense anyway.