The UK has been the best place for startups and established brands to conduct their business.
However, everyone must prepare their yearly tax return and submit it to the HMRC. This can be challenging, tedious and time-consuming, especially for people waiting till the last minute before filing tax returns.
Hiring an accountant for your tax return will streamline your process and ensure you follow tax regulations and deadlines. Additionally, they can help you save money by considering your eligibility for tax relaxations.
In this blogpost, we will go over every step you need to take while hiring an accountant for your tax return purposes in the UK.
Table of contents
- Who is a tax accountant?
- When do I need to hire a tax accountant UK?
- How do you choose an accountant for tax return UK?
- Conclusion
Who is a tax accountant?
Hiring a tax returns accountant is good if you are worried about handling tax returns, gathering documents like invoices and receipts, checking balance sheets regularly, etc..
They can guide and advise you on tax-related issues, like minimising tax liabilities, maximising benefits, and guaranteeing compliance with tax regulations.
However, they can also take part in tax aspects of high-level events and transactions like company mergers and acquisitions or setting up new operations overseas.
When do I need to hire a tax accountant UK?
Taxes in the UK impact everyone, yet people struggle to understand its structure, how tax returns work, and how it affects them. However, going through the huge tax code (over 17,000 pages, the longest in the world!) is daunting and confusing, especially for businesses.
It is when you can hire tax return accountants.
Listed below are the top 5 reasons why you need a tax accountant UK.
1. Starting a new business
Usually, an accountant for tax returns is a must when setting up a business structure. They ensure you stay compliant with the UK tax regulations from the beginning. Additionally, these professionals can help you with your day-to-day accounting needs.
2. Handling complex tax matters
Tax pressure can be a real headache regardless of how organised you are. Moreover, tax can be complicated if you deal with international transactions or have multiple revenue streams. However, at this point, tax return accountants can offer you expert guidance.
3. Efficient tax planning
Tax is already a financial burden for most businesses, and to save money, people often do unlawful stuff. This includes not paying proper taxes, hiding income sources, etc. It may further lead to HMRC investigations and costly penalties.
A tax accountant can help you optimise tax strategy, minimise liabilities lawfully, and allow you to avail of tax deductions or incentives.
The UK government offers numerous tax deductions to businesses. For example, in the UK, you can avail of a tax-free personal allowance of £12,570 during the tax year 2023-24.
4. Annual tax filling
Running a business is already hectic, and owners often forget deadlines. But if you constantly miss tax deadlines, you must pay a fine to HMRC as per their regulations.
Therefore, you can look for a tax accountant near me via recommendations or online search to avoid such costly penalties. These local professionals can accurately prepare your annual tax returns and help you submit them to HMRC before deadlines.
5. Protection during tax audits or disputes
If your business faces tax audits or dealing with tax disputes, always ask for expert assistance.
They have experience handling such problems in multiple companies and can create the best solutions for you.
Additionally, they do everything necessary during such investigations or audits on your behalf and can save your business reputation.
How do you choose an accountant for tax return UK?
Tax requirements can vary from business to business; therefore, you must carefully hire an accountant for tax return UK.
Here are 6 steps to hire these professionals in your company.
1. Determine your business needs
As said before, tax requirements for your company may not be similar to those of your friends. Therefore, you must assess the specific tax-related services you require, like tax planning, tax return filling, managing payroll taxes, etc.
2. Research suitable tax accountants
With the introduction of MTD (Making Tax Digital) in the UK, you can find websites of multiple online tax accountants.
You can read about them online, look for client testimonials, verify their work quality, etc, ask for recommendations from business associates in a similar industry or use platform like Experlu.
3. Check qualifications and credentials
The term accountant is not legally bound in the UK, and anyone with a little knowledge can call themselves an accountant. Therefore, confirming their qualifications and credentials before hiring them in business is essential.
This process goes the same when hiring tax accountants online. Usually, a qualified tax accountant carries an authentic certificate and is a member of recognised accounting bodies in the UK, e.g., ICAEW, ACCA, ICAS or ATT.
4. Evaluate the tax accountant’s expertise
It is essential to understand that tax accountants may have multiple areas of expertise. This means such an expert can offer you tax advisory services, whereas another tax expert can provide accounting or auditing services.
Additionally, you must verify if these professionals have experience working with companies similar to yours and within the same industry. It ensures they can come up with the best solutions instantly.
5. Check out their services
Not all tax accountants will offer you the same service. For example, an online tax accountant may help you with MTD, but someone without knowledge of digital taxation cannot. Furthermore, few tax experts not only do your tax return filing but offer advisory, accounting and bookkeeping, and auditing services. You must seek an agency that will suit your present and future tax needs.
6. Discuss fees and engagement
Finally, you must ask the tax accountants about their fees and compare them to find the best one within your budget. An online accountant tax return service will always be more affordable than your in-house accountants.
Therefore, you must carefully consider your budget and charges before hiring an expert.
Also, you must ask the experts about their terms of engagement, ways of communication, scope of work, confidentiality, and other necessary contracts.
Conclusion
A tax accountant is essential for any business in the UK, irrespective of size and industry. However, the process of finding the most suitable one can be daunting. This blog post will help you hire a tax accountant for your business.
Make sure that person understands your business well, is trustworthy, suitable to meet your tax requirements, and aligns with your business values.