Tax advisor in ... with financial and payroll accounting: Accounting

For many entrepreneurs, bookkeeping is just a tedious formality, but mistakes can quickly become expensive. Due to their training in business subjects, tax consultants are qualified to take over the bookkeeping work for you. It is difficult to predict whether this step will be financially worthwhile in every case. However, if you commission a professional to do your bookkeeping, it should not be underestimated that the tax consultant or accountant will assume liability in the event of incorrect bookkeeping.

How can a tax advisor help with accounting?

Training to become a tax consultant also includes subjects such as economics, business administration and accounting. A tax consultant is therefore both qualified and authorized to take on accounting for companies. The specific activities that this may include can be found in the Remuneration Ordinance for Tax Consultants (StBVV).

Which accounting activities may tax consultants carry out?

The fifth section of the remuneration regulations lists tasks that you can commission a tax advisor to carry out, including the fees that can be charged for them. In addition to preparing an asset status or drawing up annual financial statements, balance sheets and profit and loss accounts, bookkeeping and payroll accounting are also explicitly mentioned. In addition to the actual bookkeeping and keeping tax records, the accounting of receipts can also be taken on.

What are the costs of having a tax consultant do the accounting?

The fee regulations for tax consultants allow a great deal of discretion for bookkeeping: including accounting of receipts, between 2 and 12 tenths of a full fee can be charged each month. The full fee is calculated based on annual turnover. If your company has an annual turnover of 75,000 euros, the full fee is 133 euros, so the monthly costs for full bookkeeping can be between 30 and 160 euros. The costs for payroll accounting are calculated per employee. The fee range is particularly wide for bookkeeping: the amount subsequently invoiced depends on the actual workload for the tax consultant. Here, it pays to keep internal documents and receipts well organized in order to keep the additional time required to a minimum. You can also possibly take on the so-called preparatory accounting yourself, such as accounting of receipts; this can reduce the costs by half. In order to be able to assess whether it is financially worthwhile to do the accounting yourself or to commission employees to do it, you must not only compare the costs of a tax office with your personnel costs: special software is usually used for professional accounting, the license for which you must first purchase.

Minimize risk and liability for accounting errors

An important reason why you should put your bookkeeping in the hands of a specialized tax advisor is to transfer liability for accounting errors. As long as you do the bookkeeping yourself, you have to take responsibility for every error, regardless of whether it is a missed deadline or an incorrect account assignment. Discrepancies in the bookkeeping can quickly lead to additional payments of large sums to the tax office if an audit is carried out; not least because back taxes are subject to high penalty interest. In addition to tax advisors, accountants are of course also available to have the bookkeeping done in your company; however, they cannot prepare annual financial statements on their own because these must be approved by a tax advisor or other authorized bodies. An association for wage tax assistance will not be able to and may not carry out bookkeeping; it is intended for private individuals without income from self-employment. If you commission a professional accountant or tax advisor to do your bookkeeping, you can be sure that they will keep an eye on all important deadlines and identify discrepancies early on so that they can make corrections. Should a mistake occur, the tax office you have commissioned to carry out these tasks is liable.