As the 31^st January tax return deadline is looming, many business focus their attention on their year-end accounts. Throughout January we have been contact by a number of businesses in and around the London area enquiring about the pro’s and con’s of a remote/online accountant. In short, a remote accountancy practice has a number of benefits:

• Save a business time – Reduced travel costs for meetings
• Constant telephone access allows issues to be solved immediately
• Lower costs – This is not always the case but without the need for face to face meetings, remote accountants can generally maintain lower costs with fixed fee pricing.

Is this method right for every business? Of course the answer is no. The main obstacle we face is that certain businesses like the thought of visiting their local accountant, so they can build up a relationship. If you are happy with your accountant, the trust you build up is important, so sometimes this will outweigh any additional fee. We often make the point that each business has completely different circumstances. Certain companies want to save both money and time and are happy to ‘take a leap of faith’ with a remote/online accountant. Other businesses prefer face to face meetings to build up a rapport with their accountant. At the end of the day it comes down to the individual or business, as no two companies are ever the same.

Don’t just take our word for it; here is what our London based clients think:

“I started using TWD because I wanted to file my tax return online and needed a time and cost-effective method of coping with CGT: you needed then, (maybe you still do), specialist software to submit CGT data online. TWD did this for me and also checked over my whole return at very reasonable cost so I’ve been more than happy to keep using them.”

Mr. Bob Howell, London

“Over the past five years my tax affairs/returns and subsequent letters were a headache, never seemed to get it right. Not any more. Your questionnaire was easy to understand and complete…I commend the polite, professional response experienced each occasion I have contacted TWD Accountants.”

Mr Irvine, Essex

Finally a few stats about us:

• We prepare accounts for over 3,000 clients per tax year.
• In 2010/11 we filed in excess of 7,500 tax returns.
• 40% of our accountancy clients are based in London or the South East.
• In our latest customer survey 97% of our clients stated they are either satisfied or very satisfied with the support they receive.

As this is my first blog of 2012, a belated Happy New Year is in order.

We have just returned back from exhibiting at the 2012 SWPP Photographic Convention in Hammersmith. The convention was a resounding success and it was great to meet up with so many of our clients.

For those photography clients who could not make it, here are a few pictures from the convention.

For more details regarding self employed tax and accounts for photographers please click here.

Here is a picture of Harpreet from Magenta Photography, who was our competition winner.