Hi Guys,
Just recently been to see our accountant to do the tax returns for last financial year ending 30 June 2005 - and after taking us through the returns he presented us with his bill for $5,000 ! ! !
I know it is probably hard to compare everyone's situation but I wanted to bring it up anyway.
Between my business partner and my girlfried - we have about 8 returns to be done - 2 Unit Trusts & 1 Company, 2 Family Trusts, and 3 Individual returns.
I do all the book keeping through out the year and present everything to them very nicely in a lever arch file together with a CD of the MYOB accounts. In the lever arch is everything, balance sheets, profit and loss, bank reconciliations, Bank statements, GST Statements, PAYG Summary sheets, and for us as individuals a summary list of all income received and a list of possible deductions with amounts.
It looks like they have just taken this information - typed it into their pre-formatted accounts, worked out the depreciation and then distrubed the income down through the right channels. Pretty simple stuff really - I would expect a junior at H & R Block would be able to do as good a job.
The thing really getting my goat up the most is that on top of this they have not provided any tax planning or suggestions for how we could go about minimising our tax - which I have asked about many times.
Heck if you are paying $5,000 I at least expect some suggestions to be thrown my way.
Towards the end of the meeting I asked him - so how can we get the tax bill down?? His response was - your earning the dollars you have to pay the tax. I then said to him - what about private health cover - (given we have to pay a medicare surcharge of about $1,700) - his response - ooohhh yeah you could do that.
I also asked him if we could claim anything else - his response was - get me the receipts and we'll see. Shouldn't he be rattling off some expenses we may be able to claim??? I have seen DGG saying something about a family trust may be able to claim the cost of a CD. So instead of buying it personally with after tax dollars - let the family trust buy it with pretax dollars. Not sure if that is exactly right but something along those lines.
And another thing is our HECS - I had worked out earlier in the year that the HECS that we would pay in the tax return would pay out our HECS in full. So with this knowledge in mind I was going to make a voluntary contribution before we lodged our tax returns and receive a 10% discount. A saving of about $1,200. When I gave him all our info about 2 months ago to do the tax this was noted on our individual summary sheets - But when we were going through the returns just recently I noticed the HECS in the return. I mentioned to him what I was planning to do and he said you should have paid it months ago and that he couldn't change it in his system because that is what is showing on the tax office's system.
Isn't he meant to be the expert giving me the suggestions, things such as what personal items may be able to be bought in the Family Trust with pretax dollars???
If I felt I was receiving good tax minimisation advice I would probably wouldn't mind too much about the bill. And this guy does own investment property and he is into shares.
It might be time to find a new accountant - or am I being too harsh. Dale are you taking on any new clients???
Cheers
Just recently been to see our accountant to do the tax returns for last financial year ending 30 June 2005 - and after taking us through the returns he presented us with his bill for $5,000 ! ! !
I know it is probably hard to compare everyone's situation but I wanted to bring it up anyway.
Between my business partner and my girlfried - we have about 8 returns to be done - 2 Unit Trusts & 1 Company, 2 Family Trusts, and 3 Individual returns.
I do all the book keeping through out the year and present everything to them very nicely in a lever arch file together with a CD of the MYOB accounts. In the lever arch is everything, balance sheets, profit and loss, bank reconciliations, Bank statements, GST Statements, PAYG Summary sheets, and for us as individuals a summary list of all income received and a list of possible deductions with amounts.
It looks like they have just taken this information - typed it into their pre-formatted accounts, worked out the depreciation and then distrubed the income down through the right channels. Pretty simple stuff really - I would expect a junior at H & R Block would be able to do as good a job.
The thing really getting my goat up the most is that on top of this they have not provided any tax planning or suggestions for how we could go about minimising our tax - which I have asked about many times.
Heck if you are paying $5,000 I at least expect some suggestions to be thrown my way.
Towards the end of the meeting I asked him - so how can we get the tax bill down?? His response was - your earning the dollars you have to pay the tax. I then said to him - what about private health cover - (given we have to pay a medicare surcharge of about $1,700) - his response - ooohhh yeah you could do that.
I also asked him if we could claim anything else - his response was - get me the receipts and we'll see. Shouldn't he be rattling off some expenses we may be able to claim??? I have seen DGG saying something about a family trust may be able to claim the cost of a CD. So instead of buying it personally with after tax dollars - let the family trust buy it with pretax dollars. Not sure if that is exactly right but something along those lines.
And another thing is our HECS - I had worked out earlier in the year that the HECS that we would pay in the tax return would pay out our HECS in full. So with this knowledge in mind I was going to make a voluntary contribution before we lodged our tax returns and receive a 10% discount. A saving of about $1,200. When I gave him all our info about 2 months ago to do the tax this was noted on our individual summary sheets - But when we were going through the returns just recently I noticed the HECS in the return. I mentioned to him what I was planning to do and he said you should have paid it months ago and that he couldn't change it in his system because that is what is showing on the tax office's system.
Isn't he meant to be the expert giving me the suggestions, things such as what personal items may be able to be bought in the Family Trust with pretax dollars???
If I felt I was receiving good tax minimisation advice I would probably wouldn't mind too much about the bill. And this guy does own investment property and he is into shares.
It might be time to find a new accountant - or am I being too harsh. Dale are you taking on any new clients???
Cheers