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Practice Excellence Conference

Any Answers comes alive!

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18th Sep 2015
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Have you ever wished that you could enjoy the cut and thrust of technical debate you see on AccountingWEB’s Any Answers page take place in real life?

Well that’s just what’s going to happen at 3:10pm on Thursday 24 September at the Practice Excellence Conference.

AccountingWEB publisher Ben Smith, the impresario behind this interactive encounter, explained what he wanted it to achieve: “A lot of professional conferences are very passive and we wanted to break away from that at our event. Any Answers Live is our way of injecting a bit of the online community experience into the conference hall.”

The whole point is to let the session participants have their say about the different issues, exactly as happens with Any Answers.

AccountingWEB’s tax policy editor Rebecca Cave will be acting as compere for the session. She will be assisted by a panel of experts including Gabelle’s VAT expert Kevin Hall and tax blogger Satawiki Chanda who will do their best to field questions from the floor and come up with practical answers based on legislation and published guidance.

VAT and property issues tend to top the monthly rankings for questions asked in Any Answers, but we’re sure that other perennial favourites like the new dividends tax, directors’ loan accounts, benefits and expenses and difficulties with RTI are all likely to make an appearance on the day.

The questions that are posed will depend partly on what the delegates want to talk about in the session, which is likely to be an intense 60min tax update.

Whether you plan to take part or not, you can also make your mark on the Any Answers Live session by suggesting your own questions in comments below. If you would like to go more deeply into some of the current hot topics in tax, Rebecca Cave will also be hosting a “Tax Krypton Factor” session at 11:50am that will examine incorporation decisions, share buy-backs, PPR and international VAT issues. 

Replies (4)

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By JCresswellTax
21st Sep 2015 09:59

Is this live show

Going to be open to those any answers users who don't want to appoint an accountant?

Just thinking we could mention this to those sorts of posters on here when they pop up?

Thanks (1)
John Stokdyk, AccountingWEB head of insight
By John Stokdyk
21st Sep 2015 11:44

It is if they buy a ticket!

But since we designed most of the Practice Excellence Conference sessions for practitioners, I suspect we won't get too many small business people along on Thursday.

In the meantime, rather than going back over the blight of non-accountants posting queries on AccountingWEB, have you ever considered the possibility that their questions might be a signal that they do need the help of an accountant?

If you look at those posts in that light, they are a good new business opportunity. In which case, advisers don't have too much to lose by leaving a polite reply that offers a morsel of useful advice along with a suggestion that you're available if they want to find out the stuff they really need to know to fix their problem.

Thanks (2)
Replying to lionofludesch:
Stepurhan
By stepurhan
21st Sep 2015 17:10

Any stats?

John Stokdyk wrote:
In the meantime, rather than going back over the blight of non-accountants posting queries on AccountingWEB, have you ever considered the possibility that their questions might be a signal that they do need the help of an accountant?
Often responses say just that.Often the response to that is extremely hostile. That has a detrimental effect on the forums as people stop responding at all, or even leave the forums entirely. Whilst I can point out previously prolific posters who have severed their ties with here I'm sure you are aware of those who have left.

Quote:
If you look at those posts in that light, they are a good new business opportunity. In which case, advisers don't have too much to lose by leaving a polite reply that offers a morsel of useful advice along with a suggestion that you're available if they want to find out the stuff they really need to know to fix their problem.
You rolled this out when the situation on the forums was at its worst. Do you have any empirical evidence of this happening? Better still, do you have any statistics of how often this happens as a percentage of non-accountants posting here? Because if out of every 100 non-accountant posters here, 80 get shirty, 19 just stop posting and 1 goes on to find an accountant through posting on here, then you are effectively saying we have to put up with a lot of abuse to get a new client. Not very enticing.

That's even before considering the odds against a random poster on here even being in my area. Remote working is admittedly possible in the modern age, but most clients still like to meet their accountant in person from time to time. Money Laundering checks are also more difficult with someone you've never met.

Thanks (1)
avatar
By Huw Williams
21st Sep 2015 15:05

Caritas Anchor House

How about looking at this decision and how the charity might have got it wrong and what they could do about it.  And whether HMRC might have misunderstood what it should have been considering before issuing a £1m bill.

Thanks (0)