What your accountant should be doing for you

Most directors have never been told what an accountant is supposed to do, so they judge the relationship on whether anything went wrong. Nothing went wrong, so it must be fine. That is a low bar, and it is the reason people stay somewhere for nine years and never find out what they were missing.

The floor

Every accountant should be doing this, and if yours is not, the problem is not strategy, it is basic delivery:

• Year end accounts prepared and filed on time
• The corporation tax return, and the tax paid at the right amount on the right date
• The confirmation statement filed
• Your self assessment, if they do it, filed without a January scramble
• Deadlines tracked by them, not remembered by you

That is compliance. It is genuinely necessary and it is not worth a premium, because it is the same work in every firm in the country.

What separates the two

Compliance looks backwards. It reports a year that has already happened, and by the time the accounts land, every decision that affected the tax was taken nine months ago.

Planning looks forwards. It is the conversation before the year end, not the report after it. In practice that means someone actually asking:

• Is the split between salary and dividends still right for your income this year
• Is there a director’s loan building up that will trigger a charge in nine months
• Should profit be coming out at all, or working inside the company
• Is a pension contribution from the company the cheapest pound you will move this year
• Does the structure still fit, now that there is a second trade or a property in it
• What happens to all of it if you die, and does anyone in your family know

None of that appears in a set of accounts. All of it changes the number.

Four questions worth asking yours

1. When did we last talk about anything other than a deadline?
2. What did you change about my position this year, rather than record?
3. If I sold this business in three years, what should I be doing now?
4. What do you charge for, and what is extra?

Good answers to those are worth staying for. Vague answers to all four are worth a conversation somewhere else.

On price

Cheap compliance is fine if compliance is genuinely all you need, and for some businesses it is. The mistake is paying planning prices for compliance work, or assuming that a low fee includes advice that nobody ever quoted you for. Ask what is in the fee. A firm that cannot tell you plainly is telling you something.

Getting this right, every year

Tax 4 Pros looks after limited company directors on a fixed monthly fee. Accounts and filings done properly, and the pay, structure and planning decisions looked at before the year end rather than after it. Every package and every price is published, so you can see what you would pay before you speak to anyone.

See the packages and prices, or book a fifteen minute call and we will tell you which one you need, including if that is the cheapest one.

Figures are current for the 2026/27 tax year at the date of publication. The Autumn Budget on 28 October 2026 may change several of them. This is information, not personal advice, and your own facts change the answer.

Written by Sarah Charlton, tax strategist and founder of Tax 4 Pros.