A frustrating time

A bit of rant I'm afraid.

In our line of work, we spend a proportion of our time keeping up to date and learning new rules and guidance, particularly tax. The knowledge that we develop, we provide as services to our clients, for which we get paid.
We really don't expect to get paid, if we don't do what the client has asked us.

This week I have had two scenarios where we have been called to meetings to advise, and in both cases our advice has provided very significant tax savings. However in both meetings, the potential clients decided to have a go themselves.

Now normally, not a problem. This happens. However in both of these cases, I travelled hundreds of miles, at our expense and had meetings where I was under the impression that we were going to be undertaking the work.

Not only did we incurr cost, but I also wasted a whole lot of time that could have been spent on other clients. Now, this is rare that this happens, because, as with these two cases, I usually have phone conversations with the potential clients first. The problem is that for every one like this, our propensity to be as open and up front with all potential clients diminishes.

I wish the two ladies, and the two gents well in their businesses. I will be keeping a very close eye on them from a distance. If you do need my help in the future, you'll be paying in advance next time.

Rant over.

Chris

Activity

Apologies for not posting anything for over a month. A week's holiday and then a frantic few weeks back, have just not left much time for the blog.

Activity seems to be high at the moment as we move closer towards tax return season. We have grown our business significantly this year, especially on the personal tax side of things, and the workload is now starting to flow.

Most of the team are now fully booked for the remainder of the year with planned work, and as usual January will enevitably be a write off, as we deal with all the late self assessment returns. Dean and Vinny this year decided to impose some time limits on when we receive tax returns. This means that only tax returns received by the 31st October will be guaranteed to have completed returns by Christmas. This has helped to bring many in earlier than normal.

We have also been busy with several large audits. For us this is audit season.

Our other focus this last month has been on Enterprise Investment Schemes and Venture Capital Trusts. These schemes provide significant tax advantages to businesses and investors provided they are set-up correctly. The rules and process for forming them are rigourous, but the potential advantages far outweigh the process hassle. We have several clients who have been the focus of our attention in this area. If you would like to know more then please let me know. We may even be running a seminar soon on this.

I'll try to post another blog soon, but for now, I must get to my 3.30 meeting.

Chris