Advice from Accountants needed

[northernladuk]

Are there any ACCOUNTANTS on this forum that can provide a response please?

The question is: Is there any reason why my Ltd company cannot have:
Accountant 1 - Annual Accounts + CT600
Accountant 2 - PAYE (employer & employee payroll etc.)

Ignore Self Assessment, Confirmation Statement, dividends & VAT for this scenario.

It might cost more, but cost aside - will there be any issues?

Is that a job for the 3rd accountant?

Bearing in mind FA does PAYE and there is usually only you, or you and the spouse in the company I'm starting to think there is something fishy here.

Are you trying to do something hooky that one accoutant won't like so by having two you can hide it from one?

Another throught, if you do come unstuck and an investigation starts you are going to have a nightmare. Neither of them will help you on a full investigation so defeating the whole point of having an accountant to keep you safe.

[Maslins]

As others have suggested, legally no reason why you can't have multiple accountants. In big corporate world, it's not that rare. If nothing else, there's real question marks over the ethics of a business getting a statutory audit as well as lots of other support from one accountancy firm.

But also as others have said, it seems odd in the micro business world. We'd be a bit uncomfortable being one of the accountants with the situation you suggest, unless we were very happy with the "why", and it was abundantly clear where each party's responsibility started and ended. Our general fear would be that at some point down the line we might be criticised for not picking up on a knock on impact from something the other accountant had suggested. Or that something would fall between the gaps of what they did and what we did. So to avoid that, we'd feel the need to at least loosely oversee everything they did (and likely vice versa), which isn't efficient at all.

[Craig@Clarity]

At the risk that we're all being trolled here further, I confirm that there's no reason why you can't have 1 accountant to do your accounts and another to do your payroll. However, it maybe that you want an accountant to do your accounts and a payroll service to run your payroll rather than another accountant. In reality, I've never had a client appoint someone else to run their payroll on a monthly basis as commercially it doesn't make any sense.

To fulfill all our curiosity, why do you ask?

[northernladuk]

To fulfill all our curiosity, why do you ask?

Maybe they've gone to a small accountancy practice with two people. They want the clever one to do the hard stuff and the tea boy to do the rest?

If it's not that then I don't think we are ever going to find out.

[escapeUK]

Maybe they've gone to a small accountancy practice with two people. They want the clever one to do the hard stuff and the tea boy to do the rest?

If it's not that then I don't think we are ever going to find out.

Their partner is one accountant and their child the other one. Hence both needing salary 1257L and reducing corporation tax. I love a tax efficient idea!

oh yes.
refreshing to see someone who likes wasting hard earned cash.

Look at any part of the government.

[gregNoWorries]

No problem running two accountants. Just make sure your Payroll data finds its way in your Accounts data at the end of the year. For sure its an odd arrangement but still workable.

[Tinkerbell3]

Thanks to the accountants that have replied.

My understanding was that corporation tax and PAYE are separate tax groups - so no real reason why they can't be dealt with separately.
However I wanted to get a feel for what accountants thought.

I'm not sure why some of the responses have been so suspicious or combative - some downright rude.

It was just a question. I am not doing or planning to do anything wrong.
At some point I hope to grow my business beyond a micro company so thinking about accountancy services to support that.

Accountancy, bookkeeping, tax advice etc. are separate services.
Some people choose to have these as a single combined service - other people choose otherwise.
Different choices suit different people/ businesses.

People really should respond respectfully - even when they don't understand or agree with others' choices.

[northernladuk]

Thanks to the accountants that have replied.

My understanding was that corporation tax and PAYE are separate tax groups - so no real reason why they can't be dealt with separately.
However I wanted to get a feel for what accountants thought.

I'm not sure why some of the responses have been so suspicious or combative - some downright rude.

It was just a question. I am not doing or planning to do anything wrong.
At some point I hope to grow my business beyond a micro company so thinking about accountancy services to support that.

Accountancy, bookkeeping, tax advice etc. are separate services.
Some people choose to have these as a single combined service - other people choose otherwise.
Different choices suit different people/ businesses.

People really should respond respectfully - even when they don't understand or agree with others' choices.

I don't want to be rude but reading this just makes me think you don't understand accounting or the tools that are available. Have you got an accountant already? Are you already contracting or is this your first dip? A chat with an accountant about what they do and how complex it is should have answered all this. For a start FreeAgent does nearly everything. All you need is an accountant to keep an eye on issues and then just carry out timed activities like quarterly VAT and yearly CT and in most cases it's a review of the data and press a button. I'm thinking you don't know how they do it or how much time it takes.

We pay sub 2k for accountancy services a year. With an account billing at what, say 100 quid an hour (which is probably a very low assumption) you are getting well under 20 hours effort from them for the whole lot. That's around an hour a month effort... and you want to split that in to two?

As you can see from the responses generally people do NOT have them as separate services. Accounting is the service, all the things you are mentioned are just tasks within that service. Even medium sized business with many employees etc only have one accountant. Ours can be run by FA by yourself if you've got some nouse. I'd be interested to know where you have found the 'some people' that have separate services as I've never seen it in 20 years of contracting and the accountants that have responded have never seen it either.

I think you don't fully understand how contracting accounting works or the tools used to carry it out so have come up with an idea to fix a incorrect situation as I mentioned in one of my other posts.

If you already have an accountant I'd get a meeting with them for a high level view of what they do and what FA does for them. If you don't then I'd think about engaging a small accountancy service that has the time to sit with you and give you an overview and work with you at each step of the first year so you get a clear understanding.

I do believe you are coming up with ideas to try fix a situation you've got fundamentally wrong so need to investigate the basics and see how that fits your needs (which it will) before going down very complex and strange paths like this.

And just like anything in life, dealing with two people instead of one is always going to be more complex and will probably be more hassle that you think it serves. Try keep services/people to a minimum before adding complexity where it is not needed. One accountant, knows your business, knows you personally, understands the whole picture and away you go. Two people dipping in, not caring, being blinkered to the bigger picture is just a recipe for disaster.

All meant as straight advice on an internet forum and not being rude even though it probably comes across like it.

[malvolio]

We don't mean to be rude (OK, I tend to be... ) but perhaps if you had answered the questions trying to ascertain why you are asking what you are trying to do, we might have come up with something more constructive.

Anyone asking a seemingly silly question (it may not be one, clearly) really ought to expect people clarifying why before they offer any kind of sensible answer.

It's not rudeness, it's busy people trying to help...

[jamesbrown]

My understanding was that corporation tax and PAYE are separate tax groups - so no real reason why they can't be dealt with separately.
However I wanted to get a feel for what accountants thought.

I mean, if you wanted to create a completely convoluted and unnecessary administrative burden, sure they are all "separate" to some degree. Each quarterly VAT return is a separate return, so you could get a separate accountant to check and file each one for you . The CT600 and accounts filed with HMRC and CH reflect the overall state of the company at the end of the FY (income statement, balance sheet etc.), so they'd better be accurate. Obviously (at least it should be obvious), it makes no sense to have a team of accountants dealing with the accounts of a micro-entity and you don't need to worry about running a larger entity until you have a larger entity to run, which BTW will require a turnover > ~£600k or > 10 employees or a balance sheet > ~£300k (two of three).

Methinks you are a little too thin-skinned for even the professional forums where you'll generally get polite but entirely realistic advice that reflects the level of coherence of the questions asked. But I do agree with others that, if you're not a troll, you probably have a lot of thinking and learning to do.