Can Anyone Recommend A Good UK Accountant?

Hi Adam, I'll repeat the advice given to me, by a former tax inspector: if you can, go to a chartered accountant with the letters ACA, specifically, after their name ("accredited chartered accountant") rather than "ACCA" or "ACMA" or other letters you don't recognise, because although all the others may be perfectly competent, the Revenue instinctively "recognises" ACA's rather better and slightly more respectfully than the others and that can make a small difference to how they deal with you, your chances of getting audited and so on. I know very little about this subject, but I offer that thought as "second-hand from a tax inspector", for what it's worth.

In my experience there are two types of accountants. Traditional and creative. Who you choose to work with depends on your character and the way you do business.

I've worked with both in the past and I much prefer the creative, as does my bank account. I suggest you pop in to some local accountants and get a feel for them. You want to be able to meet at short notice when you require and therefore I wouldn't employ someone 100 miles away, niether would I trust my accounts to a referral from a forum on the internet :-)

One thing I would say from reading your opening post on the thread you linked to is there is no such thing as unemployed whilst making a profit and it will bite you in the arse the longer you leave it. I've been there and I've got the proverbial T-shirt to prove it.

I'm not an accountant so confirm this with one, but - You could go self employed as suggested in your other thread, but the most tax efficient way for you to manage your profit is to setup a limited company, pay yourself your tax free personal allowance which I believe is about £7k at present, and then pay the rest in Directors dividens. You will then pay corporation tax on the dividens and you can draw up to £50k before you start paying personal tax.

You will of course have to submit annual accounts but small businesses with a turnover of less than £6.5m no longer have to submit audited accounts, which makes this simple.

But once again, I'm not an accountant so go and see one!

Malc, I'm interested in what you have to say :-)

MalcSimm - Hey there Malc, thanks a ton man! I'd really like to hear more... although on that point of LLP... do they have to be partnerships or can I act as the sole owner? I'll drop you a PM as well, but please feel free to share on this thread too

Neil_Patmore - Neil, thanks to you too as well buddy... I'd like to start by saying I don't really want to own that same t-shirt However I really like what you just said... I'll check it out, but that seems like great advice, so thanks. Exciting advice at the very least I'll take a look at some local accountants... Although I'll be moving in about 10 months... so I'm not sure what'd happen then.

Kenj, that'd be brilliant mate

I'll shoot a PM over to you now... And on an interesting side note (for me) I used to live and work in Bracknell.

In actual fact, I spent my University Internship working at Hewlett-Packard.

The UK's Silicon Valley is rather a grand term, no? ... happy memories though, it has to be said


Speak soon mate and thanks for the advice!

Hey Paul,

Thanks a ton for that... I should have looked into it myself (I looked at the others, but left out ACA based on the fact it was stated with such confidence and kinda made sense... it woulda been my guess too :p).

As for the rest of it, I'll hunt out some F's if I can... sincerely, thank you Paul, great advice.

My tax is about as uncomplicated as it gets