An accountant approached me last week to ask whether any of the members of my Tax Advice Network would be willing to work with his practice on a regular basis? The answer was 'yes'. The background to this accountant's question was not uncommon. What I admired however was his desire to address the issue. And
Every now and then I hear about general practice firms of accountants that want to boost their abilities to help clients with more complex tax maters. And a couple of my newer mentoring clients have also asked for my thoughts here. This has been a challenge for as long as I can
This is a very different blog post to usual. I hope it will be of interest to accountants and tax advisers generally even though it does not contain any of my usual insights, guidance and advice. Thirteen years ago, in July 2008, I authored the lead comment article in Taxation magazine: Why
Which result would you rather your marketing efforts generate? A or B? A = 50 calls and emails from possible new clients who ask loads of questions but who have no intention of paying you the sort of fees you charge; and probably don't want you to do much more than their
It's nearly 20 years since I was headhunted by a 12 partner of accountants in North London, who wanted to recruit their first tax partner. I explained to the headhunter why I wasn't interested. In the event I agreed to meet with the managing partner who tried to persuade me to reconsider.
Recently I was asked to prepare a quick list of ten common tax mistakes that business owners should avoid. The length of the article in question didn't allow me to expand very much on the mistakes I listed. This is probably the closest I have come to writing about tax matters for
Every now and then someone who has known me for a long time tells me about their tax problems and asks my advice. I have to remind then that I haven't been a tax adviser for well over 12 years now. I had already stopped giving tax advice before I created the Tax
Whether you spent a lot or a little on your website I'm sure you hope that it will generate business for you and provide a return on your investment. How might that work in real life I wonder? Actually we know how it's supposed to work, don't we? Someone searches online for an accountant
This post is a post-script to a couple of posts I originally wrote for the TaxBuzz blog. As I no longer update that blog I have to comment here. And, yes, I HAVE to comment. Two people with whom I worked some years ago have been found guilty and imprisoned for their part in a fraudulent tax
I imagine that some accountants are concerned that clients may have complaints in the light of the latest media stories about tax avoidance schemes. Such complaints will rarely be justified and would only arise due to some of the misleading reports of the way that Jimmy Carr, Take That and other celebrities have used the
Last year I awarded a (notional) prize for what I considered to be the best Budget night 'commentary' that I saw the following day. The winner, and runner-up to a lesser extent, stood out among the dozens of 'me too' pieces that were, frankly, not worth anyone's time and effort. Many years ago the Chancellor's
I've long been critical of the 'me too' type of overnight budget commentaries. Indeed, these days 'overnight' is slow and many commentaries appear online within hours. I have seen dozens of such identikit commentaries since the Chancellor sat down yesterday. Almost all contain pretty standard lists of the headline measures, cut and paste extracts from the
One of the most common questions I'm asked, often by recruiters, is if I know a prospective new tax partner for a smaller or mid-size practice. Sadly I can rarely help directly - especially if, as is usually the case, the firm would like their new recruit to have a following (ie clients and fees).
I recently blogged about the 5 things accountants can do to make more profits. Selling tax schemes was not on the list. Why not? Quite simply because the idea is vastly over rated, over hyped and mis-understood. (Typically by non-tax specialists). There are plenty of people who will tell you that you can generate
In yesterday's blog I described what I see as the three categories of advice that best describe the approach of many professional advisers. The third category I described was 'dangerous' and I explained that advisers giving dangerous advice, normally do so as they are what we might term 'unconscious incompetents'. That is they are unaware
What would be the impact on your practice if a client alleged that you had been negligent? It's not something that anyone wants to consider, of course.Often such allegations lead to complaints that result in investigations and disciplinary proceedings, or a professional indemnity insurance claim – whether justified or not. All such eventualities invariably result
