For general practice dealing with small clients, pubs, taxi operators, taxi drivers, building companies, hair dressing salons etc is a tax advisor or accountant better placed for compliance work.
Same question above is a tax advisor or accountant better placed to develop lower level tax avoidance strategies
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A tax advisor is better placed to give tax advice. An accountant is better placed to give accountancy advice.
A general practitioner will need a mixture of accountancy and tax skills to service their clients competently.
To provide compliance services of the kind you describe a person will need to be able to prepare accounts and provide tax advice / prepare tax returns.
All "tax advisers" worthy of the name should be able to provide tax advice / prepare tax returns but only some of them will be able to prepare accounts - some will have no idea how to do so.
Likewise with "accountants". As their job title indicates they will be able to prepare accounts, but only some of them will be able to provide tax advice / prepare tax returns - some will know nothing about tax.
Obvious
All very true but i meant that someone in general practice dealing with the above would defo need financial reporting and taxation skills. The question is who would be better placed to offer the best service to the small possible medium sized clients?? Only in your opinion?
I though the answer was obvious. You either need a tax adviser who can prepare accounts or an accountant who can provide tax advice.
As a marketing title I suspect "accountant" is better. The man in the street is more likely assume that an accountant can provide tax advice than that a tax adviser can balance their books and prepare their accounts.
What answer do you want?
It's not sitting on the fence to say both. Would you prefer an answer of neither, since each on their own would be lacking some required skills for the work.All very true but i meant that someone in general practice dealing with the above would defo need financial reporting and taxation skills. The question is who would be better placed to offer the best service to the small possible medium sized clients?? Only in your opinion?To provide compliance services of the kind you describe a person will need to be able to prepare accounts and provide tax advice / prepare tax returns.
All "tax advisers" worthy of the name should be able to provide tax advice / prepare tax returns but only some of them will be able to prepare accounts - some will have no idea how to do so.
Likewise with "accountants". As their job title indicates they will be able to prepare accounts, but only some of them will be able to provide tax advice / prepare tax returns - some will know nothing about tax.
Perhaps explaining why you are posing this question as flat either/or question would be helpful.
john has answered...
but put another way...you have had a crash in your car, you need the engine fixing and the bumper respraying....do you go to guys who repair bodywork...or a garage to get the engine fixed...or has been suggested...one with both skills. I think the give away maybe 'general practitioner'...one I would perceive with experience of both areas.
better skill base...
one where you have the appropriate skills to deal with the work you are dealing with...kinda sounds obvious....
Both
if anyone thinks the professional body exams are comprehensive enough to allow someone to go directly into private practice on there lonesomeIe tax but limited accounting skills or accounting but limited tax skills
It's not one or the other, it's both.
Who thinks that?
For my professional body, you are required to have 3 years verified experience of the sort of work you do in practice before you can get a practicing certificate. So it would seem even the professional bodies don't see the exams as enough either. if anyone thinks the professional body exams are comprehensive enough to allow someone to go directly into private practice on there lonesome Ie tax but limited accounting skills or accounting but limited tax skills
As for your explanation that you want the "community feel" for which is better, I think you have your answer. Neither in isolation is likely to be any good. Talking about tax experts that have learned some accountancy and accountancy experts with some tax knowledge is meaningless. It's just a different way of saying that you need both sets of skills, which is what pretty much everyone is saying anyway. Indeed, a little knowledge of one side may be worse than none at all. As Pope said "A little knowledge is a dangerous thing" and you just have to look at some of the questions posed here to see the truth in that.
Both
If you are talking qualifications, the best general practice people I have come across are both ACA/ACCA and CTA. For tax matters I would only ever go to a CTA myself, but of course this is all just a generalisation and like all professions some are better than others, but generally I have found most if not all CTAs very good indeed
The perception as you pointed out earlier for the man in the street is that an accountant would be best placed to give you general compliance (SA, VAT, CT) advice when infact they done very little tax in there exams.
Not necessarily true. There are advanced tax papers in some of the chartered qualifications.
good point
and even the Chartered Tax Adviser has specialisms to focus on say indirect tax, but most I know did OMB tax and are brill
Another question for you, which is the best accountancy bodies is viewed at the best is it ICAEW / ICAS as opposed to say ACCA
I was going to give an answer, but my view will be dismissed because it wouldn’t be representative of the whole community.
For someone that purports to be in the industry, you seem to know very little about the industry.