It is well known that if you incur a penalty from HMRC and you followed professional advice you could make a claim to reduce the penalty. Why? Well you can legitimately say that you thought you were doing the right thing.
Mid September saw an interesting case heard though in which the taxpayer has been told they should not have relied on their advisor as they were clearly idiots and they should have known it!
This is pretty interesting for a number of reasons but for now let’s focus on how on earth a typical tax advisor should know if their advisor is an idiot.
How does anyone know anyone else is an idiot? It might not be as hard as you think but there are some surprises along the way. First of all anyone can call themself a tax advisor. Accountants do it all of the time but at least they’re accountants. Nope! You can also call yourself an accountant if you want!
Strangely you can’t pretend to be a policeman or solicitor but tax advisor is fair game for some reason.
What should you do then? Just like when you arrange your gas check you should be making sure your choice is a on the Gas Safe register you can also check with the Chartered Institute of Tax to see if someone has actually passed some exams and is overseen by a regulatory body.
Does this mean they are definitely going to be right? Nope! Does it dramatically improve your chances of dodging the idiots? Yep.
It’s a tricky world out there. Give yourself a decent chance of success. If you’re asking for help at least ask for it from someone recognised as being able to give it.