Most clients are great, but not all. That's life.
I have one who thinks accountancy and tax services are a commodity and tries to treat me accordingly.
Despite my best efforts he has a high personal tax bill and I can picture him hopping mad. The image makes me smile. Is that so wrong?
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Poor chap! (not)
There are worse things in life than earning lots of money and having to pay tax on it. :)
We all have at least one!
"I have one who thinks accountancy and tax services are a commodity"
Yes, aren't they just the worst sort. And they always whine about their fees, not to mention their tax bill.
I must admit that when the first question that a new prospect asks is "how much will this cost me", I always quote a larger than normal fee to compensate for the inevitable aggravation that will accompany them.
Oh yes
Yes, I've had several over the years and I have actually been known to punch the air!
With a professional hat on, this is not good news, which is probably why I don't have any like this at the moment, but, it is still nice to get a plonker, derive pleasure in giving him (and it has always been hims) grief plus a high tax bill, before telling him to go elsewhere.
One of the rare pleasures in our biz :-)
Large VAT bill...
A client moaned to me about the size of their VAT bill recently. I congratulated them on having such a good quarter - same goes for income tax.... You have to earn it to owe the tax.
I've had one like that in the past
He believed that any tax bill was too high, so when he ignored my advice on dividends and got hit by a huge bill for self assessment (which was my fault obviously), I did smile inwardly.
Disengaged him about 3-years ago for being abusive to my bookkeeper.
Only £1m?
We had someone on here once that claimed that his firm was paying £5m a year in tax. How we laughed.
@Andy
It's never made me pleased but it has made it very difficult to resist saying "If you want to pay less tax, you should earn less".
I think it's dangerous personally when one ends up thinking like that about a client. You could end up telling him what you really think about him. Safest to disengage.
playing the devil's advocate
Definition of capitalism - "an economic and political system in which a country's trade and industry are controlled by private owners for profit, rather than by the state"
Like it or not accountancy services are a commodity, no business person would be that good if they didnt try and get the best price for their goods and services.
Why any accountant would take delight in a client paying loads of tax is beyond me. If they are that bad, tell them to pay someone elses wages!
If they earn the money they owe the tax.
I had one who was so unhappy with his tax bill he went off to a firm who said they could reduce it massively. Shortly afterwards, I got the work dealing with the subsequent HMRC investigation.
I tell them
If I don't like them and they complain about the tax, I tell them I have a foolproof way to reduce your tax, I will bill you for your profit, hey presto no tax - no one has taken me up on it yet.
Wave idiots farewell
Small-sized client asked for specialist tax advice to mitigate a continuing liability.
We advised how to save £100,000 a year in tax and third-party professional fees and probably the same again in internal staff costs.
They did the very thing we told them not to do and it will now cost them £100,000pa.
Did the accounts, saw the outcome and resigned. It may have been £40k in annual fees, but what a relief to get rid of them.