Should I ditch my accountant?

Dear Aunty B,

I am wondering whether or not to pay my bill to my accountant.

What happened was this: I asked for some advice on employee share schemes as I realised my employees were going to be hit with a big tax bill, which was awful considering I had given them the shares as an incentive and suddenly it didn’t look like much of an incentive at all.

So I asked my accountant and indeed other accountants for solutions to the employee share plan fiasco and I just kept being told there wasn’t one. This caused a lot of hardship for one of my employees who ended up getting very annoyed and leaving.

Then another entrepreneur told me of a solution and I rang my accountant and mentioned the solution and he agreed it was a good one! I won’t bore you with the details but it was just a solution from another angle, but it made me feel like we have been speaking Double Dutch because when I asked him why he hadn’t mentioned that solution when I first rang, he said it was because I hadn’t asked that question and I ended up becoming so annoyed that I hung up which I never do.

I am so cross as they are a big firm and I pay a lot of money for their services. This has happened to me before. Any words of wisdom Aunty.

MV

Dear MV,

I love accountants. I come from a family of them so I understand how they think. For a start they are terribly busy and don’t like to waste time, so if you ask them a question they give you an answer.

They are also operating to the letter of the law, so when you ask a specific question – and the same is true of lawyers – you get a specific answer. Even when you are sitting in absolute despair begging for a solution, many of them will not conjure up an answer like the rest of us mere mortals would. They will peel away the inflated language, get to the point and give you the same specific answer.

What you have to do is this. Say to them, take off your accountant’s hat for a second. Motion to a chair so they can literally imagine themselves taking off their hat and putting it next to them.

Pat the chair just to make it clear that their hat is on it. Then say to them, imagine I am a friend and you could give me any advice to solve this problem. Then explain the problem which might be I want to reward my staff but not create a tax liability. Can you think of any way that is possible? Encourage their creativity by telling them how clever they are. And ask them what they, personally, would do in that situation?

Keep probing. Most times it will result in nothing other than them repeating the same advice. But it might have got them coming at the problem from another angle which is what you want them to do.

Oh, and when they leave make sure they don’t forget their hat.

Be smart,
Your Aunty B

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