income tax

[royzart]

i thinking of becoming a sole trader
and wondered how much tax accountant
would cost..roughly

[Skyline D]

There's no way to answer that without knowing where you are, what you're likely to be doing and what sort of records you will keep.

An accountant in Central London will charge a much higher hourly rate than one in rural Scotland. If you have a few dozen transactions over a year and nothing complicated it will take far less time than if you have hundreds of transactions a month and don't keep great records.

You could have a massively complicated business but keep your own excellent records and present effectively accounts to an accountant to check and work your tax out from annually and end up paying far less than an oddjob man with a shoebox full of invoices because his takes longer to actually sort out.

Could be anything from �100 to several thousand depending what's involved. If you are competent to fill in a few forms yourself and don't have anything particularly complicated tax-wise you could indeed deal with everything yourself and not go near an accountant.

[terambulan]

As a sole-trader will you be buying goods to retail?

If the turnover is small; less than �50k pa then am sure you could do ur own accounts.

The tax office employ staff to help you for free to do ur own accounts so contact them.

Its all very well employing accountants but when things go wrong, I have found the accountants plead "I worked on figures produced" and back off leaving u to face any problems urself!

[Taylortax]

A lot of accountants and tax consultants will give you a free initial meeting so you can discuss things, get advice on what records to keep and an idea as to how much things will cost. There are quite a few people running small practices from home and they will be the cheapest and have quite enough know-how and resources for the smaller business. i would be wary of asking at the tax office without at least getting back-up information elsewhere. They have a quick staff turnover which means that the person you see may not have a lot of experience and, whether deliberately or accidentally, they are more likely to tell you what you are obliged to declare, rather than what you can claim!