Contractor accountants are specialist accountants who provide their service to the self-employed in particular, contractors or freelance workers. These are the workers that are contracted either short-term for a specific job or intermittently over the years for periods of time when a company is particularly busy. Alternatively, they may be contracted simply to carry out a specific and specialist task.
Benefits of using contractor accountants
They provide more services
Contract accountants offer far more than just a simple bookkeeping service. They will if you ask them to, deal with taxman for you. This includes filing tax returns and dealing with any correspondence from your taxman.
They offer advice
Also, they offer advice on how to avoid paying more tax than you need to. They will ensure that you comply fully with the law, while still earning a good living from what you do. This advice can include how to word a contract and structure it so that you avoid appearing to be a regular employee of the firms that you work for on a relatively regular basis. Having this kind of advice is invaluable because it will stop you falling foul of the IR 35 rules. It ensures that you appear to the taxman as what you genuinely are i.e. a temporary employee.
They assist in decision-making
Also, experienced accountancy firms will also help you to decide whether or not you should operate under an umbrella company. This is not suitable for every freelancer, but for those that it is suitable for an umbrella company can provide a secure way to get paid and keep your tax bill to an absolute minimum.
Finding contractor accountants
An onlin
e search for the term ‘contract accountants’ will bring you back a fairly extensive list of accountants who claim to offer these specialist accounting services. However, it is important to shop around and look for the most experienced accountant you can find. Look for those that explain the rules to you and do not encourage you to try to game the tax system. If your accountant gives you advice that leads to you dodging tax, it is you, not them that will be prosecuted.
Before hiring contractor accountants, it is always advisable to enquire about the price, cost or charge of the accountant and what are included in it. Usually, the prices vary from firms to firms but the things included are; annual accounts, payroll, VAT returns, tax returns, self-assessment, references and so on. After making a survey of a few companies, one should come to a conclusion. You must have a knowledge of your requirements and whether they are included in the price list.