In my experience, even some good accountants can be rusty on tax matters,apart from the "big 4" but you'll pay dearly for these.
Agreed, make sure they are qualified members of the institute of tax
If I were you Id look for a tax advisor rather than an accountant.
In my experience, even some good accountants can be rusty on tax matters,apart from the "big 4" but you'll pay dearly for these.
Regarding the Big 4, all have extremely professional tax departments with AITI specialists in Income tax,Corporation tax,CAT,VAT and CGT.
Your reference to accountants doing audit work in the Big 4, not being tax competent implies to me that you are not so familiar how these companies are run.
I think Ubiquitous point was exactly that the Big 4 have separate audit and tax departments and therefore accountants in the audit section are not exposed to tax work themselves as they just take the figures the tax department give them. If you take the overall services from a Big 4 firm they are excellent (and pricey) but if you relied only on an ex-auditor in the Big 4 for tax advice then be wary.
In my experience, Rusty tax accountants in smaller and medium practices are the order of the day. Obviously im not talking about routine tax matters here but rather more challenging issues where many accounting PROs seem to run out of road fairly quickly.
I need to pay back tax on sharesand want to do this in the next few months - period is probably 3/4 years and a considerable sum (to me anyway!).
Do not under any circumstances go to a solicitor for tax advise unless they can prove the have the AITI qualifications, they have no qualifications in the area, would you go to an carpenter for legal advise. Ask anybody in tax the amount of times they are called in after unqualified (in Tax) solicitors make a complete mess of even the most basic tax queries.
Which bit is completely untrue, a solicitor has no recognised professional qualification in giving tax advise.
This is an absurd statement, anybody who has done any study in the area will know that CGT is one of the most difficult Tax heads even for very experienced advisors.
I couldn't tell you about some of the stuff I studied for some of those exams. Practical experience (and talk to other people with practical experiece) is far more beneficial than exams for tax advice.Yes, that bit is untrue. As I have already stated, solicitors ARE qualified to give tax advice. We undertake training and exams in various taxes as part of our training.
Fair enough about the solicitors having some experience and am sure that solicitors that have learned from others dealing with tax queries on a regular basis are more than competant. I don't think that this is the norm though.Solicitors undergo intensive and very detailed training in CAT, CGT and stamp duty as these are taxes that most solicitors deal with and advise on every day. We also have some training in other taxes but mainly this wouldn't be as intensive and I don't think the majority of solicitors would deal with any tax other than the above three, aside from some run of the mill VAT or other queries.
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