Tax advisor in ...

Find a good tax advisor to make the adventure a success!

As the tax return deadline approaches each year, questions about tax issues start to pile up among business owners and employees. Many people turn to a tax advisor as their first port of call, but it is difficult to find the best tax office in your area from the large number of tax offices. In addition to specializing in your area, a good tax advisor is also characterized by conversations in which he pays attention to you and explains his next steps in a way that is easy to understand. Recommendations from other clients can help to assess this more personal level, but there is no substitute for meeting someone face to face.

However, a tax advisor is not always absolutely necessary: ​​private individuals can also get support with their tax return from tax assistance associations. How do I find a good tax advisor in my area? How do I know if a tax advisor is good? And where can I get the cheapest tax advice? This guide clarifies the most important questions about finding a tax advisor and gives you tips on how to keep the fees for tax advice low.

The Internet offers you great help with search options and rating portals in finding the best tax advisor in your area, but ultimately your personal impression must also be right. When searching, you can use the following tips and criteria to help you make your selection:

Tax advisor search

• Pre-selection through online search: are formal criteria met? (Location, field of expertise)
• Testimonials from other clients: personal impressions and reviews
• Telephone call and initial consultation: can I build trust with the tax advisor?
• Is a tax assistance association an alternative?

What makes a good tax advisor?

• You are part of his target group (freelancer, small business owner, private individual?)
• Professional competence in your field of activity
• Located near your home
• Trustworthy conversation atmosphere
• Transparency in decisions and invoicing

How do I find the best tax advisor?

If you are looking for professional help with your tax return, it is worth looking for a good tax advisor. But there is a wide range of options: there are currently more than 90,000 tax advisors registered in Germany, and the large number makes it difficult to find the best tax advisor. [1] How you can best get advice on tax issues depends entirely on your individual situation.

Characteristics of a good tax advisor

The profession of tax advisor is defined by the Tax Advisory Act . This law also protects the professional title; in addition to a degree or suitable training, many years of practical experience are a prerequisite for being licensed as a tax advisor. This Tax Advisory Act is intended to give you the security that state-licensed tax advisors can also advise you responsibly. [2]

However, the professional qualifications of a good tax advisor go beyond the legal minimum, and depending on your specialization , you will be in more or less good hands in some tax offices. For example, if you are an entrepreneur with international business partners, the profile of the tax advisor should be tailored accordingly, while small business owners and freelancers have different demands on tax advice. The more unusual your field of activity and your assignment to the tax advisor, the more important it is for the advisors to undergo ongoing training in this area in order to be familiar with changes in the law and to be able to avoid pitfalls.

In addition to professional qualifications, the size of the tax consultancy firm is also a selection criterion. As a rule of thumb, the larger the company for which you are seeking tax or auditing support, the more employees the tax office should employ. For a medium-sized craft business, a smaller tax office is sufficient, while a large company with several locations will also require more staff for tax auditing and consulting. For this purpose, cooperation with tax consultancy firms that are also represented at several locations is a good option. Especially if you have several branches, you should also take into account the travel distance of the tax consultants: the effort for the journey will be passed on to you as costs, so you can save money by choosing a local tax consultant nearby.

As a private individual or self-employed person without several employees, you are usually better off in a small tax office. One important reason is that your order is less likely to be blocked and delayed by larger orders from large companies. On the other hand, many people find it easier to build trust in one another when only a few business partners are involved.

If you have already shortlisted several tax offices that all meet your requirements in terms of professional profile, size and distance, your personal gut feeling should not be neglected as an important selection criterion. After all, your tax advisor will receive more detailed information about your financial situation than almost anyone else; you have to be able to trust him. The better an advisor knows your situation and your background, the more effectively he can work and reduce unnecessary additional costs.

Finally, you should also place value on good and effective communication . This applies not only to office hours and waiting times for appointments, but also to the content of your conversations. A good tax advisor will also explain to you what he does and why. If you cannot understand all of your tax advisor's decisions, ask him and ask for clarification. It is in the advisor's own interest to satisfy his customers by doing a clean job. The transparency of the tax office should also be reflected in the invoices: a correct and clear listing of all agreed services should be a matter of course.

Search and placement options for good tax advisors

Because there are a large number of tax consultants that you could hire, it makes sense to make a preliminary selection on online portals. In good offers for the tax consultant search, you can formulate individual criteria in addition to the location, such as a focus on certain business sectors or specialization in particular tax topics. If you are looking for a good tax consultant in your area, you can use such search portals to quickly create a list of tax offices that meet all the formal criteria.

You can only find the top tax advisor in a personal conversation

It is more difficult to assess the personal impression and the question of whether you can build a relationship of trust with the consultants. A simple online search can only provide a few answers here. However, it can be useful to take a closer look at your shortlist of tax consultants on comparison portals. Read reviews and recommendations from other clients to get a better impression. You may even find a ranking of the best tax consultants in your area.

But be careful not to give too much weight to other reviews: if the assessment is based on a simple grading scale, you will not be able to see the background that led to the award of a grade. The assessment criteria are very individual, and while other clients may place more emphasis on fast processing or low costs, others place greater emphasis on high transparency or a more personal atmosphere. More detailed reports are therefore more meaningful. When you read assessments from other clients, you should always compare whether they belong to a similar customer group. The same tax office can be the ideal choice for medium-sized companies, while freelancers and small business owners are unhappy with their work.

Check your tax advisor in the tax advisor directory

Since the job title "tax advisor" is protected by law,[2] there is also an official tax advisor directory . However, this is not intended to help you find the best tax advisor in your area, but rather as a kind of reference work: you can enter the name of a tax advisor or tax consulting company in this directory and check whether they are actually officially recognized and licensed to provide tax advice.[3]

The first conversation

After you have done a lot of research online and have searched for and found a tax advisor who meets your criteria, you should call them soon. During the phone call, you can make sure that from the tax office's point of view, your request falls within their area of ​​responsibility and fits their expertise. You can also ask what waiting times and processing times you can expect. If you make a good impression, you should make an appointment for an initial consultation. Many tax offices offer such initial consultations free of charge so that you can get to know each other and create a good basis for further cooperation.

An initial personal meeting is the quickest way to find out whether you can build trust with this tax advisor. You will also get a good impression of how clearly decisions and advice are communicated and explained, and whether your questions can be answered appropriately. If the tax advisor asks you questions about yourself in the first meeting, that doesn't have to be a bad sign: the more precisely he knows your situation, the better he can advise you on tax matters.

Services and tasks of a tax advisor

The profession of tax advisor can include more than just the annual preparation of the tax return. The entire scope of services is listed in Section 33 of the Tax Advisory Act; a more detailed list of possible work can also be found in the Remuneration Ordinance for Tax Advisors, Tax Agents and Tax Advisory Firms (StBVV) . [4]

What services do tax consultants offer?

The core activity of a tax advisor is to provide advice and assistance in fulfilling your tax obligations. For this purpose, a tax advisor can also represent you as a client in tax matters. The Tax Advisory Act also expressly includes advice in tax criminal cases and tax administrative offenses that are accompanied by a fine. The law also lists assistance in fulfilling accounting obligations as a further task, which is particularly interesting for self-employed people and entrepreneurs. For example, you can have a tax advisor prepare your annual financial statements including tax balance sheets.

Fees and types of contracts

Despite the variety of tasks that you can commission your tax advisor to carry out, the remuneration regulations contain a detailed breakdown of the fee that can be charged for each activity. This is usually made up of two parts: an hourly fee based on the amount of work involved and a value fee that is calculated based on the value of the item, such as the amount of your income in the case of a tax return. In the case of larger orders with several individual tasks or in the case of longer-term cooperation between the company and the tax advisor, a flat fee can also be negotiated.

To calculate the value fee more precisely, a so-called "full fee" is first specified in the tables of the remuneration regulations, which increases in stages with the value of the object. The more you earn, the higher this full fee is, because a larger amount of taxes is the subject of your order to the tax advisor. Depending on the actual activity, the remuneration regulations then specify a range within which the value fee can lie; for example, 10 to 60% of the full fee for preparing a tax return can be charged. The choice of the exact amount is then left to the tax advisor, who can, for example, take into account the effort involved in processing or the complexity of the situation.

The time fee can be between 30 and 70 euros per half hour or part thereof. You can help to keep this rate low: prepare the orders for the tax advisor well! Collect all documents that might be needed or that you do not fully understand and want to have explained to you. The less time the tax advisor has to spend requesting and sorting all the documents, the lower the costs will be. Another advantage of properly maintained documents is the shorter processing time: the order can be completed more quickly. Clarify with your tax advisor in advance in which format he would like your data and documents: if you already maintain electronic accounting yourself, this can make your tax advisor's work easier.

When is a tax advisor actually necessary?

Although a good tax advisor has a wide range of qualifications and is trained to handle many different tasks, it is not always worth going to a tax office. One of the most common requests is certainly a request for help with preparing a tax return. While business owners and self-employed people have to turn to tax advisors with their concerns, private individuals can also put their questions to a tax assistance association.

Income tax assistance associations are entitled to advise their members on tax matters as long as they do not have taxable income from self-employment. The exact criteria for whether you can and may receive help from an income tax assistance association can be found in Section 4 Paragraph 11 of the Tax Advisory Act . The associations provide self-help and only charge a membership fee, which is usually paid once a year. This makes income tax assistance associations a very cost-effective alternative to tax advisors, even if their range of services is significantly smaller.

As a cost-effective alternative to an annual visit to the tax office, it can also be worthwhile to find a good tax advisor in your area and ask him to explain the completed tax return to you in detail. If you have not had any major changes to your employment or private circumstances in the last year, you could probably prepare the tax return yourself. This has become much easier since the introduction of the electronic tax return (ELSTER), and if you have kept the professional tax return from the previous year, this provides a good basis for only having to enter changes.[5] Please note, however: while tax advisors and tax assistance associations can submit tax returns up to the end of the year, the deadline is six months earlier if you prepare your tax return without professional advice.

Sources

1. https://www.bstbk.de/de/bstbk/berufsstatistics/
2. https://www.gesetze-im-internet.de/stberg/BJNR013010961.html#BJNR013010961BJNG001300319
3. https://steuerberaterkatalog.berufs-org.de/
4. https://www.gesetze-im-internet.de/stbgebv/BJNR014420981.html
5. https://www.elster.de/elsterweb/infoseite/privatpersonalen