What To Look For In An Accountant?

relentless

relentless

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So my first real business task is to find an accountant and register a company.

What should I be looking for in an accountant or should I skip a real person all together and use an online service?

For reference, I'm UK based.
 
The large majority of these people are plain horrible.

Clock in at 8am, clock out at 5.. never have ran a business in their life and def don't know the industry you are in ever.

If you just want someone to crunch numbers monthly and provide you a P&L and keep the books in order for the IRS ( or w/e is in the UK ), then just hire an online service like Bench.co

If you want real legal tax advice for setup and such, you need to find a well regarded Tax Attorney and have a couple of discussions with them. Find somone that use to work for the IRS and has more than 15 years experience.

For filing, I use a CPA but I have had a hard time with them too that really are proactive.
 
Depending on what you are doing, it can be helpful to have a tax advisor who is up to date with European circumstances (especially with Brexit).
Are you going to employ lots of people? Are you going to buy and sell lots of stuff?
As a one-person business I have never used an accountant, just a tax advisor for the yearly submission. I do my own quarterly sales tax, payments and EU declaration online with the government website. (EU-based)
 
It depends whether you need someone for just doing taxes and book keeping, or more strategy. I have a good accountant, who knows international business well, and he does mine and my wife's taxes, reads contracts, helped me buy property, visas, etc. Sort of a hustler/fixer.

If it's just for some tax filings, just use an online service. Also, here, an accountant is sort of a stamp of approval on the books, so you get less shit when you're audited.

It depends on the country too I guess, I only know southern Europe. Opening a company in the UK is super easy though, and I'm pretty sure the book keeping/filings are much less for smaller companies.
 
Something I've noticed with accountants is that most of them seem to work for the taxman and not you.

What I mean by that is that they constantly try to weasel their way out of definite answers to anything slightly complicated.

Their mindset is constantly: You need to pay the taxman what is his, instead of "I'm going to make sure you don't pay a penny more than you have to".

A good accountant then is someone who is willing and able to fight for their clients. Someone who knows their shit in and out and thus is not afraid to suggest methods that are legal, but controversial.
 
Thanks for the advice so far guys.

I didn't even realise there was such a think as tax advisors here in the UK. It looks like the best strategy will be to speak to an accountant initially to help setup the LTD company and basic book keeping functions and then use a tax advisor as business grows to reduce the tax bill.
 
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