How tech will liberate accountants
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"Is this technological explosion we're witnessing really a threat to the profession?"
No, of course it isn't and I think very few people on this forum think it is. The problem with the current move to MTD is that it's a threat to small businesses and a penalty farming exercise, designed to rake in more money to the coffers of the treasury.
The accountancy profession will be left to pick up the pieces when MTD comes in and try and help as many clients as possible to manage their obligations, with many self employed people either disappearing into the black economy or being forced to give up their businesses and go back into employment for bigger firms.
100% agree with your comment Peter Cane, I wasn't referring to MTD as the threat. Longer term, MTD is a great opportunity to begin building better relationships up with clients since more interaction will be required.
The threat/opportunity I refer to is that technology is getting smarter every day and the balance between automation and human intervention required to produce compliance accounts will change.
This change has some accountants worrying that the value of what they deliver will deteriorate and clients will challenge fees even more than they do now as they discover that software is automating an ever increasing degree of compliance production.
That is likely to happen if accountants purely stick to producing compliance work.
There are a great many accountants primarily focusing on just that and I fear those will suffer unless they make the shift in their practice I refer to and will continue to expand on in future articles.
Hope that makes sense, I appreciate you reading my article and commenting Peter.
Shane