Every business should have an accountant, no matter how small. You may see an accountant purely as someone who’s there to fill in your forms to send to the tax man, and then you’d be wrong. Quite honestly if you only have a small business you could probably find the time to fill in the forms by yourself, but how would you know if you were doing it right? How would you know when they had to be returned by? And, what if you do them wrong? Well, the answers to that one are easy, they’ll either get sent back to you so that you can fill them out again or, the tax man will be sent to your doorstep expecting to see every piece of paper that’s ever gone through your business. Scary thought isn’t it? Having an accountant could help you avoid this panic and worry – they’d do it all for you and get it right the first time. Having an accountant to deal with these unnecessary worries leaves you to concentrate on new business ventures and earning more money.
As well as saving you a lot of hassle and time an accountant also helps you to save money and helps your business grow.
So you’ve now saved a lot of time and maybe you’re thinking you could have done everything right the first time yourself, maybe you could fill those forms in in your sleep. You’re now thinking to yourself, what’s an accountant going to do for me now? Just because there’s no forms left to fill in doesn’t mean that an accountant is of no benefit to you. In fact the reality is completely the opposite. When it comes to completing forms, that’s one issue, but is the way you’d do it going to save you and your business the most money; will it even save you any money at all? An accountant will spend time going over the forms to find ways for you to save money on your tax bill. The longer he or she can spend going over your paperwork the more money you’ll save. There’s so many legal ways to save money with regards to taxes, but most people neither understand nor have the time to put into a claim. The law changes every day and most normal people don’t have the time to keep up with it. For an accountant on the other hand, it is their job, it’s second nature.
They spend their lives trawling through papers and receipts trying to find loopholes and reasons why their clients don’t have to pay certain taxes. You may have seen in the media recently that big corporate bosses are paying less tax – percentage wise – than cleaners. Wrong, yes maybe but do you know why they can get away with paying so little? Because they have great accountants.
So you’ve got an accountant, you’ve saved yourself loads of time and saved loads of money. What do you do with it all? You could expand; your accountant is not just there for your benefit they’re also there to help your business grow. When making business decisions it is always a good idea to consult your accountant. They know and understand your business to almost the same depth as you, as well as having the added knowledge of your whole financial situation. Use your accountant as the middle man, ask for their advice, they’ll give you an unbiased answer based on all areas of your business. This is a useful tool, you can usually only see the benefits of a business venture, after speaking to your accountant you may realise it’s not a great idea.
This post was written by Nicholas Jenkins, a large company owner, who benefits greatly from the services of an accountant. The article was written for www.creganaccountants.ie, leading accountants for tax planning Ireland.
Is An Accountant A Waste Of Money?
