Hi everyone,
Does anyone have an opinion on this? My accountant finished my tax return a couple of weeks ago and asked me to look it over, see that I was happy with it, and then sign it and pay him. When I looked it over, I found a few mistakes and pointed them out to my accountant. When he re-entered the numbers, it turns out my wife's tax return underestimates her capital gains for the year (she redeemed some managed funds) by around $50. A small amount that the accountant says is not worth fixing as the fee he would charge me to do so would not make it worthwhile.
FOr my tax return, I also redeemed some funds from colonial first state. Colonial are doing a dodgy where they're refusing to give us a capital gains statement for my redeemed funds. They instead gave us a print-out of all of the details of when we bought units in the fund and sold them. THis was even after my accountant and I sat down to speak to them. Colonial reckons my accountant should be able to work the CG out from this, but my accountant insists that he can't. My accountant then said we would therefore completely ignore my CG liability for the action of redeeming the funds, and if the ATO ever finds out then we will just tell them that COlonial refused to help us out. I think my CG will be in the hundreds, but I'm not sure as I can't work it out. But I know that when I redeemed the funds I had made a few thousand on my initial investment.
SO then I asked my accountant to put that advice in writing as he was pretty much advising that he knew there were mistakes, but in his opinion we should do nothing and deal with it only if the ATO ever decided to find out. And in his opinion, even if they did find out, they still wouldn't chase us for it because we're talking about small amounts.
So I guess I'm asking:
1. Is it fair enough that I asked my accountant to put his advice in writing? He baulked at my suggestion, and eventually said for me to write a letter detailing what I understood he said and send it to him. He didn't even commit to signing the letter. But I thought I might add something in the letter saying that if I don't receive a reply I will assume this to be an acceptance of everything I put in the letter. Is that good enough?
2. Is everything my accountant suggested OK? He reckons 90% of tax returns have mistakes in them that the tax office never finds out about, and even if they do they don't do anything about it because the mistakes only deal with small amounts of money.
3. I'd like to pull out of this altogether and file my tax return with someone else as I don't like the entire way they've handled this. But am I entitled to do that as they've done all the work already?
Thanks for any replies
John
PS I am never going to use this accountant again!!!
Does anyone have an opinion on this? My accountant finished my tax return a couple of weeks ago and asked me to look it over, see that I was happy with it, and then sign it and pay him. When I looked it over, I found a few mistakes and pointed them out to my accountant. When he re-entered the numbers, it turns out my wife's tax return underestimates her capital gains for the year (she redeemed some managed funds) by around $50. A small amount that the accountant says is not worth fixing as the fee he would charge me to do so would not make it worthwhile.
FOr my tax return, I also redeemed some funds from colonial first state. Colonial are doing a dodgy where they're refusing to give us a capital gains statement for my redeemed funds. They instead gave us a print-out of all of the details of when we bought units in the fund and sold them. THis was even after my accountant and I sat down to speak to them. Colonial reckons my accountant should be able to work the CG out from this, but my accountant insists that he can't. My accountant then said we would therefore completely ignore my CG liability for the action of redeeming the funds, and if the ATO ever finds out then we will just tell them that COlonial refused to help us out. I think my CG will be in the hundreds, but I'm not sure as I can't work it out. But I know that when I redeemed the funds I had made a few thousand on my initial investment.
SO then I asked my accountant to put that advice in writing as he was pretty much advising that he knew there were mistakes, but in his opinion we should do nothing and deal with it only if the ATO ever decided to find out. And in his opinion, even if they did find out, they still wouldn't chase us for it because we're talking about small amounts.
So I guess I'm asking:
1. Is it fair enough that I asked my accountant to put his advice in writing? He baulked at my suggestion, and eventually said for me to write a letter detailing what I understood he said and send it to him. He didn't even commit to signing the letter. But I thought I might add something in the letter saying that if I don't receive a reply I will assume this to be an acceptance of everything I put in the letter. Is that good enough?
2. Is everything my accountant suggested OK? He reckons 90% of tax returns have mistakes in them that the tax office never finds out about, and even if they do they don't do anything about it because the mistakes only deal with small amounts of money.
3. I'd like to pull out of this altogether and file my tax return with someone else as I don't like the entire way they've handled this. But am I entitled to do that as they've done all the work already?
Thanks for any replies
John
PS I am never going to use this accountant again!!!