Desperately looking for excellent ltd accountants - any advice?

[eek]

That statement is factually incorrect.

There were various calls for specific examples of how the proposal would affect contractors, and a few people provided those details - you can read some of those in the response that IPSE put together to the consultation.

Fair enough as I never saw the request for details, I was rather busy myself..

All I saw was a survey that caused both myself and my sister in law (who used to do public consultations for a living and still does it as a rather expensive freelance consultant) took one look at and thought wtf.

Let's be honest my opinion of IPSE has never been that high. It then started to go down hill when the name was changed, sank further with the consultations and disappeared with the new partnerships... Granted some of the directors are now people I trust the opinion of but personally its value as anything beyond ir35 protection is zilch.

[SueEllen]

Fair enough as I never saw the request for details, I was rather busy myself..

All I saw was a survey that caused both myself and my sister in law (who used to do public consultations for a living and still does it as a rather expensive freelance consultant) took one look at and thought wtf.

Both IPSE and Lisa from contractorumbrella asked for specific details.

Lisa was more organised. She asked on these forums, told people to spread the word and her email address actually worked.

IPSE asked in an email that linked to the site and the information was password protected. The mailbox wasn't set up the first time so people had to email twice. That way they lost lots of responses.

[Waldorf]

Genuinely, yes. We go through a DD process. We look at their customer feedback and professional accreditations. We've experience of working with most of these companies as accountancy or brolly providers for years.

We operate a fair and open tender process which you welcome to apply a next review.

You have not answered about the kickback you receive.

I would suggest that you can only be considered if the accountant agrees to pay a retainer and then a few hundred per client you refer.

Do you do these check independently or does the accountant supply the details. I think a good method would be for you to compile a questionnaire, by someone who knows what they are talking about and make several secret shopper calls but to the accounting staff NOT the sales staff.

Trouble with this is someone would probably leak the questions in return for a bung, so thinking about it a totally independent body should do the vetting rather than in house with the collusion of the agency and accountant.

Anyway, I thought the Bribery Act had outlawed these payments?

[mudskipper]

Both IPSE and Lisa from contractorumbrella asked for specific details.

Lisa was more organised. She asked on these forums, told people to spread the word and her email address actually worked.

IPSE asked in an email that linked to the site and the information was password protected. The mailbox wasn't set up the first time so people had to email twice. That way they lost lots of responses.

There were technical issues..., however all the missing emails were personally followed up (not sure what the issue was, but it was possible to see which emails had gone AWOL)

The survey had over 2.5K responses, which lent a lot of weight to the arguments that IPSE put forward.

[SueEllen]

Anyway, I thought the Bribery Act had outlawed these payments?

No they aren't outlawed under the Bribery Act but if you get caught like Age UK ripping your users/members off it's going to look very bad for your organisation.

This is why organisations should be open and say what payment they get.