Why I don't use an accountant....

[RickRow]

I agree with everything, but they're not reasons not to use an accountant.

[Clare@InTouch]

I agree with everything, but they're not reasons not to use an accountant.

Agreed - they are reasons to poke us with a stick to get us to justify what we're telling you is correct before you sign off on documents and submissions.

If you do away with us entirely and do it yourself you are no worse off when it comes to the responsibility part, but it means you have to do the research and updating of tax knowledge yourself rather than paying someone else and then just sanity checking what they've told you. You also have to be aware of the interactions between tax laws, and pay enough attention to know of the odd little quirks that only those that study tax would probably be aware of.

Personally I think it's easier to check someone else's work rather than do the whole thing yourself. But then I also wouldn't even think about servicing my own car or building my own shed. Each to their own

[TheCyclingProgrammer]

I'm a strong advocate for doing your own research and trying to understand as much as possible because as everybody has already said, its ultimately your responsibility. Knowing and understanding these things can be a big advantage and there is nothing wrong with questioning your accountant if you use one (that said, no matter how many times I try I still don't understand deferred tax provisions!).

I also think if your circumstances are simple you can mostly go it alone but I would still pay an accountant to do my end of year returns and accounts even if I was comfortable doing my own monthly bookkeeping and accounting (which is how I did it for quite a while).

Ultimately though, if you go it alone, you should add up the amount of time spent on doing it yourself, times it by your day rate and then compare to the accountants fees. I think we all know what will be cheaper.

[ContrataxLtd]

Personally I think it's easier to check someone else's work rather than do the whole thing yourself. But then I also wouldn't even think about servicing my own car or building my own shed. Each to their own

Building a shed is easy In all honesty though, I completely agree, everything I've read so far are reasons for grilling your accountant when you don't understand something rather than not using an accountant completely. Unless you want to spend hours each year researching and keeping on top of tax law!

Martin

[craig1]

I think it all depends on the type of person you are. If you're a receipts in shoebox and look at it once a quarter/year type then maybe doing it yourself isn't for you.

I do my accounting every Friday night. When I was working in London, it was my job on the train, now I'm driving in it's a job at night before I turn my work head off. I get my invoices out, expenses reconciled, bank accounts reconciled and so on to the point that if someone asked me to do my accounts immediately then I'd be in a fairly good position to just rattle them off. I've also made it easy for myself with my LLP being the primary source of personal income meaning all I need to report is my profits and profit distribution then do the rest through a very simple SA form.

I think good contractor accountants are worth every penny if you're not 100% sure what you're doing and aren't confident of taking on HMRC's helpdesks for quality information.