Do you have a limited company?

[youbuggerz]

If so, what do you pay for an accountant to do your tax return?

Mine wants £1000. I keep good records and do all the PAYE and do a monthly P&L. Seems a lot for checking over a spreadsheet :-/

Though I'm not an accountant so perhaps there is more to it!

£300 but I am self-employed, so no PAYE to work out. I give her a spreadsheet of my expenses and income and she prepares the accounts and does the return for me.

She is based in a home office on East London/Essex border so no premises to pay for etc.

We're a limited company and we've been quoted between £750-£1000 for our end of year accounts. I also thought that was a lot, I use Sage and have accurate spreadsheets so it should be easy for them (but like you I am not an account so perhaps it's harder than it looks

It's our first year of trading so I've set up a meeting with him for next week to show him how I'm record keeping in the hopes he'll pick up on anything I'm doing wrong i.e. anything he'll have to sort out and charge me extra for at the end of year.

I'm up north so it's not even crazy southern prices!

I pay mine about £2500 a year with £1000 of that being for year end accounts. But he does absolutely everything short of issuing my sales invoices. Me and Excel are not friends. So I wouldn't say 1000 is unreasonable tbh

We are up north and pay £300 approx. for end of year accounts
but its not difficult as really s/e Ltd.

£1200 per year, including monthly pay roll etc. for a Ltd Company, not self employed, they are very different.

I pay £450 a year (based in Hertfordshire).

Like you, I keep good records, do my own PAYE/Pay Roll etc.

That's inclusive of preparation and submission to companies house and HMRC too.

you could try to find a bookkeeper who will draw up accounts.

Remember they are not as qualified as accountants - but that does make them cheaper! - my firm charges £17.50p/h with a capped rate of 25 hours - but we reserve the right to increase the hours if your spreadsheets etc are a mess!

(we work in a specialised area, so I'm not touting for business, just giving you a for example...)

I have a book keeper who is a qualified chartered accountant, whose husband is a management accountant and does my VAT.

I do my own online submission based on my Sage 50 year bed report. The website really talks you through it.

£1000 for a set of annual accounts plus a corporation tax return is reasonable in my experience. I'm a chartered accountant with my own business so have done some market research on this. I charge additional fees for payroll services, bookkeeping and VAT returns.

It would take a long time to explain what goes into preparing an accurate set of accounts and tax return but it really is not as simple as putting together a simple spreadsheet.

It is about having the deep knowlege of tax and company law along with financial reporting standards plus a practical business sense.

Why do you think we train and work for so many years to get our qualifications?!

Oh, and I wouldn't consider use of a spreadsheet to be good record keeping from pov of an accountant!

They are prone to errors, everybody sets theirs up differently which can take time for an accountant to unpick to perform their checks, reporting and reconciliations are not automated, no double entry functionality etc etc etc

There are some great (and free) accounting systems out there. You can potentially cut your accountants fees by using a decent accounting system.