When speaking to a friend and prospective client earlier this year, they asked me this question. I thought it was an interesting one and I wanted to write a short blog answering it as it may help other people who have a similar query.

The simple answer is no, you don’t need an accountant. It is perfectly possible for many self-employed individuals and property owners to complete their own self-assessment personal tax returns, and it is perfectly possible for limited company directors to complete their own accounts, tax returns and confirmation statements.

There are a few reasons why you might not want to do them yourself, and I will discuss some of them here.

Time

Completing your own accounts can be quite a time-consuming activity. There can be lots of forms which may have accounting terminology that could be unfamiliar to you. It might take a while for you to understand what you need to do before you can actually get on to completing the tasks. As it is something you may only do once per year, by the time it comes around again things may have changed or you may have forgotten some elements of what you need to do, and it might not go any quicker the next time around.

If you hire an accountant to do the work for you, you will still need to do some things – for example preparing the data and answering queries – but it will be a lot less time consuming for you, leaving you to get on with the work that actually earns you the money.

Knowledge

I mentioned that there might be accounting terminology that is unfamiliar to you – the paperwork you need to complete will likely also be unfamiliar to you. We obviously complete many sets of accounts each year and so we know what needs to go where.

On top of this, tax laws can be difficult to understand and can change quite frequently. Accountants are required to keep our knowledge of accounting rules and tax laws up to date, and so you can be confident that your accountant is ensuring that your accounts are completed accurately and that your tax bill is correct.

Confidence in the accuracy

This confidence should help to put your mind at rest that everything has been completed as it should be. You don’t want to be lying awake at night wondering if you have got some details wrong or misunderstood what you were being asked. You won’t have any worry or stress whilst the accounts are being completed and you can focus on the things that really matter to you.

Support

An accountant should be able to support you in many different ways.

If your accountant is fully authorised as your agent, they will be able to contact HMRC on your behalf if any interaction with them is necessary. More than anything else, this means that we spend half an hour on hold to them rather than you doing so! We will also have the understanding to be able to answer any questions that HMRC may ask there and then to hopefully resolve any issues as quickly as possible.

You will likely have questions occur to you during the year. Rather than wait until year end and try to untangle anything, an accountant can answer your questions throughout the year so that you have the knowledge up front and can plan accordingly.

We can also support you with other things that are tangential to submitting your accounts, such as advice around the record-keeping side of things, or using software, what to do if you want to employ staff, whether you should be a limited company or a sole trader, and much more.

And if you do still think you want to complete your accounts yourself but need some support around how to do so, we can offer training packages to assist you with. Feel free to get in touch to discuss your needs and we will see what we can offer you.