Accountant overcharging?

This would be my third set of accounts. The first too had to be audited as I missed the return date in Year one. They charged me 3500 the first year and 3200 the second year including vat.
 
I am an accountant. To wind up a company without having to do accounts we would charge €600 plus the fees (advertisement €190 odd +, CRO fees). To do any set of accounts we would charge a minimum of €600. The fees charged by the accountant does not seem to be hugely off the mark. Dont even think about doing it yourself, if as you say you are not good at paperwork.
The €3,000 PA charge also appears to be reasonable. To do any audit there is roughly €1,800 worth of work. Much of this work is easy but it has to be done according to government and institute rules. The client gets no value from this and mostly involves filling in reams of useless reports. Dont blame me blame the government. The effect of this is that if you are one day late with your Annual Return this will cost you €103 fine and €3,600 extra audit fees. A ridiculous penalty.
Why were you late? Did the accountant get the paperwork on time? Was there missing information? Did you heed the CRO and the accountants warnings.
Should you have formed a limited company? Probably not. Some (not necessarily your own advisors) accountants are naughty when it comes to advice in respect of this. I would estimated that you would need a profit of about €80,000 plus before a company should be considered. Each case, however is different.
 
Thank you again for your replies. I was late the first year as my mother in law died very suddenly, she was only 55 so as you can imagine it was a big shock. The business fell by the wayside at the time I am afraid. I didnt realise it would cost so much to be late, at the time I was in such a daze I didnt even realise I was late. I dont remember receiving anything from the cro regarding an annual return date but then again I was all over the place at the time so I can only blame myself.
 
Dont blame me blame the government. The effect of this is that if you are one day late with your Annual Return this will cost you €103 fine and €3,600 extra audit fees. A ridiculous penalty.
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Who sets the extra audit fees? - is it Government controlled?
 
umop3p!sdn said:
Who sets the extra audit fees? - is it Government controlled?
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The audit fee relates to the extra work needed to do an audit. This would entail sensible things like checking sales, validity of purchase invoices, bank transactions, bank balances, existence of assets, etc.. The majority of the work however is purely procedural and an absolute waste of time. The work in recent years has been standardised and involves the filling in of various schedules, reports, etc. Very time consuming. The audit fee depends upon the amount of time undertaken multiplied by the charge out rate of the accountant involved. The figure I gave was an estimate for a very small business/company. The quality of the work undertaken is supervised by each accountancy body with regular inspections undertaken. If you do not do the work you are disciplined by your institute. Each institute is also supervised by an independant government body which is funded by the accountancy professions. This independant body is made up of mostly non accountants.
 
buckrodgers said:
Thank you again for your replies. I was late the first year as my mother in law died very suddenly, she was only 55 so as you can imagine it was a big shock. The business fell by the wayside at the time I am afraid. I didnt realise it would cost so much to be late, at the time I was in such a daze I didnt even realise I was late. I dont remember receiving anything from the cro regarding an annual return date but then again I was all over the place at the time so I can only blame myself.
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I feel for you but unfortunately CRO dont care. You get caught drinking and driving and you get a fine of €1,000. Due to extenuating circumstances you are late filing your company accounts and you effectively get fined €3,700 + with no excuses allowed. Its just not justice.
 
Thanks for clarifing that simplyjoe

Due to extenuating circumstances you are late filing your company accounts and you effectively get fined €3,700
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So you are not actually fined this, you are charged this by your accountant. The only fine involved is the €103?

The work in recent years has been standardised and involves the filling in of various schedules, reports, etc. Very time consuming.
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You'd think some enterprising company would write some software to handle all this standardised, time consuming work.
 
umop3p!sdn said:
Thanks for clarifing that simplyjoe



So you are not actually fined this, you are charged this by your accountant. The only fine involved is the €103? You'd think some enterprising company would write some software to handle all this standardised, time consuming work.
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The fine is €100 plus €3 per day up to a max of €1,200. You also lose your audit exemption for that year and the following year - effectivelly a further fine when you have to pay the auditor.

There is software but it has to be applied to each case. Over reliance on the software is dangerous.
 
Maybe someone else will read this and learn from my mistakes, or you never know - I might win my money back at cheltenham - I won a betting voucher today - I was going to try my luck!
 
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