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Becoming a self employed accountant

Can I become an accountant without a degree or an ACCA/AAT course? Can I just register a company with company house and then fill out the money laundering form on the HMRC website, which would mean that way I'm a legally registered accountant and I just need to find some clients (ensuring I know what I'm doing)

Reply 1

Exceptional

That's the equivalent of not going to medical school, setting up your own practice and putting an ad in the paper that says you're a doctor.

Reply 2

Me123456789

Original post by Exceptional

That's the equivalent of not going to medical school, setting up your own practice and putting an ad in the paper that says you're a doctor.

It's not because I would not be able to say that I can legally practise, but by registering with company house and completing a MLR form on the HMRC website I can say I'm an accountant, I wouldn't be saying I'm a chartered accountant, I wouldn't be putting any letter after my name or making false claims, people would know that I self learnt the stuff. (I'm not blindly saying this, I've read it on the HMRC website.)

Reply 3

Hedgeman49

I don't know why you'd want to add the pressure of finding clients and running a business to the already stressful situation of getting through your qualification.

You're highly unlikely to pick up enough work to make it viable and the work you do will be so basic it'll not be particularly profitable.

Also consider how you'd cover yourself in the event of being sued if (when) you make an error, which is almost inevitable as a one man band with nobody to review your work.

Be very careful

Reply 4

mo2

You maybe able to do it... but u wont be a chartered accountant so u wont get no clients as u would not know wat u doing and also there are complex rules in tax so u will have to know it all. What happens if u get it wrong and all ur clients sue u? U end up losing everyfink if ur selfemployed!

Reply 5

DJKL

You can do as you suggest but frankly without experience you will be a liability to your clients and run a high risk of one of them suing your company for negligence. The term accountant is currently unregulated.

You would really need to learn how to do the work and you cannot do that just from books/education, you really need to get your hands dirty over a number of years supervised by someone who knows what they are doing.

The catch re say being self employed as an accountant whilst also being say a student member of various bodies is this is normally not permitted by the examining bodies, accordingly in reality your best approach is to gain qualifications and experience over a number of years.

Even with training and education there will be areas of work that come up in future where you are outwith your comfort zone but at least with core knowledge and experience you ought to be able to spot when you are treading into areas within which you ought not to attempt to act for your clients.

As an example my first stint working for myself was after I had worked , mainly in practice and including my apprenticeship, for eight and half years, to set up by yourself I would think circa 7-8 years experience is possibly advisable, maybe a little less if you set up with a more experienced business partner.

Just as examples, for a small general practice you likely needs basic knowledge, understanding and experience re:

Records keeping (double entry)
Accounts preparation (sole traders/partnerships/LLP/Limited/maybe consolidations?)
Vat in general/ retail schemes/partial exemption rules
Income Tax-computations/returns both partnership and individual and planning
Corporation tax- computations/returns/planning
CGT- computations and planning
Payrolls including RTI and auto enrolment
Procedures and experience re HMRC investigations
Company secretarial returns- annual/allotments/formations/minutes and resolutions.
At a minimum a basic outline understanding of international tax re residence, domicile, agency and branch.
An ability to consider tax planning considering all of the above and their interaction, fully understanding the types of entities.
Some knowledge of finance, how banks react to business proposals, what they want re business plans/projections etc is useful and tends not to come from books.

You will note I ignored IHT, NI and tax credits, whilst I do practice I do manage without any in depth experience re these, I know the basics and I know when to bring in outside assistance re these areas.

If you really think you can both learn all the above and apply it in real life without supervision from someone else I suspect you are really deluding yourself.

( Also, as a ps, compliance work for smaller clients is now very competitive and the online/web based suppliers within the UK are likely to continue this trend, I would also not be surprised to see more foreign outsourcing/ competition from abroad, accordingly IMHO a high level skillset and some niches/ the odd speciality is possibly very advisable if considering a long term career, these possibly require a strong professional educational base i.e, get the qualifications first)

Becoming a self employed accountant

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