Hi Folks
My wife is a Sole Trader (going through tough times at the moment). She is covering all her bills but not making any wages for herself. It has been like this on and off now for 12 months. Basically she's working for no wages at the moment.
I perform her bookeeping duties for her (Cash Book, Cheque Journal, Purchases Invoice Book, Vat & Prsi etc...)
At the end of the year her accountant performs the end of year books. Not sure how much work is involved in this.
I am currently looking at all her bills to see if we can reduce them. She is currently paying her accountant 1,200 euro per year. Turnover on her business is about 95,000 euro per year (used to be alot higher).
Just wondering, does 1,200 sound excessive from other's experience?
Meeting with her accountant in a couple of month's and i might ask him about a reduction, or else might look at other accoutants prices? Just wasn't sure if what she's paying now is too high or is fairly standard.
Does she necessarily need an accountant? If the business is unincorporated and transactions are fairly straightforward, can you do the tax work and returns yourself? It's not a major problem to familiarise yourself with the tax system and Revenue have plenty of guidance on completing returns.
IMO bad advice. There are over 5,000 sections of the taxes Acts.
Likewise I dont want to get into contention on this. I believe I have answered the OPs question - you can get cheaper and from a qffd accountant.
I am an accountant for 32 years (Qfd 23) and in all that time including recently I have rarely, if ever, seen a tax return completed correctly by a non professional. This is my experience and I am letting the OP aware of my experience. I stick by my opinion that anyone with s/e income should get an accountant/tax consultant (IT qfd) to prepare their tax return.
I've seen a few completed incorrectly by qualified accountants (my wife has been on the receiving end of a few). I've seen Revenue staff at an audits conclude that the accountant who compiled and filed the return was incompetent and so charged no penalties for under declaration. Qualification and competence are not the same thing. That applies to all professions and skilled jobs.
PDCAT, if you are “doing the books” then you should know enough to assess the competence of an accountant. Talk to the one you have and see how you and they can reduce the costs (as advised above). If they won’t play ball shop around.
Some good points there Mandelbrot. Accountants (similar to other professionals), differ in respect of their professional competence & expertise. taxation is an extremely complex area and there are occasions where a reference to a tax specialist is warranted. Likewise there are many clients whose business model is simple and they should have no problem in dealing with their own tax affairs.Being a good commercially aware accountant / business advisor doesn't necessarily mean you are also up to speed on the tax side of things. So you can have someone who is a good "accountant" but a poor tax advisor - such as a guy I know of who mismanaged a share buyback for a retiring company director and cost his clients €0.5m... he'd helped them build up a solid business over 30 years, giving good commercial advice all the way along, but made a basic tax error at the end that had dire consequences.
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