Accountants for Barristers
Jack Ross Chartered Accountants have a long-standing involvement within the barrister profession and understand its terminology, complexities and pressures – in a nutshell, we speak your language! We deal with barrister tax matters each day and we are barrister experts when it comes to accounting and tax.
We take a pro-active and practical approach to collating our barrister client’s financial information for preparing accounts, using our knowledge of the sector to ensure that you can claim cost deductions for all amounts to which you are entitled such as old unpaid debtors, contingent fees not settled, subsistence allowances, legal books and subscriptions. We pride ourselves on our approach and high levels of personal service.
Our experienced Partners and Managers will discuss your financial results with you in a manner which suits your busy, professional life best, in a face-to-face meeting, by telephone or presented in a formal letter of advice – we work with our barrister clients to ensure that you receive the service you want.
Barrister Accounts preparation
We will prepare your annual accounts. Whether you still have paper records, or if you use online book-keeping such as Xero, we will prepare your accounts accurately. You can trust us to get the accounting right.
Barrister Tax Returns
Personal tax returns. Don’t you just love them? Well, here at Jack Ross Chartered Accountants we do! We’re accountants so naturally, we can’t get enough of them. Our service is delivered professionally, efficiently and on time with minimum fuss. In short, we offer the perfect cure to ease your tax return headaches.
We will ensure that you take advantage of any tax allowances to which you are entitled and work with you to ensure that you have clarity on your tax liabilities well in advance of the January tax return deadline. We also recognise that you may have income from a number of other sources such as sitting fees, dividend or savings income and rental property and as General Practice accountants as well as barrister accounting experts we are well placed to advise on all of these.
No one likes paying tax, least of all accountants. Our experts will help you minimise your tax bill.
Barrister VAT Returns
Preparing and submitting quarterly VAT Returns to HMRC can be an unwanted administrative burden and drain on your valuable time. We can remove this burden whilst also potentially saving you money by ensuring that all permissible VAT on your business costs is reclaimed from HMRC in a timely manner.
We can obtain available information on your fee receipts and Chambers expenses/recharges directly from the clerks at Chambers. Other receipts and invoices can then be provided to us in whichever way you find easiest – whether this is by taking a photo of a receipt on your smartphone to forward to our dedicated e-mail address, scanning on your computer or simply sending us paper copies by post or for collection from Chambers.
Our VAT service is tailored to your needs to ensure that we provide a quick and accurate service that is convenient to your way of working.
You can also rest assured that we are prepared fully compliant with the requirements of Making Tax Digital for VAT and the upcoming MTD changes for income tax.
Pupils
We understand that for those embarking on a career as a barrister the accounting and tax requirements can initially be quite daunting. Whether you are completing your pupillage, newly on your feet as a barrister or have recently been called to the bar, our advisors have the experience and knowledge to help you to ensure that all your VAT and personal tax obligations are well taken care of.
We can assist you in registering with HMRC for VAT and self-assessment income tax and can help you to establish simple, user-friendly systems for dealing with all your practice expenses and ensuring that all the VAT is reclaimed and your tax-deductible expenses are captured to minimise your future tax liabilities. We will also provide initial advice on when your first accounts will be prepared, what the tax implications will be and can work with you to ensure that you will have as much notice as possible of your first (and future) personal tax payments to HMRC.
Our aim is to work with you to make the financial side of your practice run as smoothly as possible so that you can focus on growing your barrister practice and on your continued advancement in your professional career.
Pension planning
Here at Jack Ross Chartered Accountants together with our sister company Concerva* we make it our business to find out what you have in mind for your future and then plan your pension accordingly. There are as many different types of pension plans as there are people, so the first thing we do is get to know you. That’s how we make complicated subjects simple.
We work with Concerva to ensure that you make the right pension plans and that the payments into your pension savings are made in the most tax-efficient manner.
A gross pension contribution of £10,000 can cost you as little as £4,000 after-tax savings are taken into account!
Barrister Tax planning and professional advice
In addition to pension planning, we also take a proactive approach in advising on other potential tax planning opportunities. This can include structuring your charitable giving efficiently, ensuring you are on the most tax advantageous accounting basis (e.g. cash basis) or even just advising on whether it is the most tax-efficient to buy, lease or finance a new car on hire purchase.
If you have other income sources and investments then we can also advise on how to structure these interests to ensure that future tax implications are minimised whether pertaining to income tax, capital gains tax on disposal or inheritance planning.
We also know that one day our barrister client’s successful practices will come to a natural end and so we can assist by continuing to advise you whether you are advancing onto the Bench or if looking forward to a long and relaxing retirement. We will ensure that your tax affairs are in order and help you to minimise your future tax liabilities.
Barrister Payroll services
We understand that barristers often require professional or secretarial assistance to manage their increasingly busy working lives. Often these services are provided by employees and so a payroll scheme is required to remunerate your staff for their services. It is also common to see these services provided by family members and so ensuring that they are also fairly remunerated for the value of these services can save you money.
We provide a full range of services from setting up the scheme with HMRC, advising on tax and auto-enrolment pension implications of various salary structures to processing the monthly payslips and HMRC submissions.
Fee protection insurance
Tax Investigations are on the increase. HMRC has spent over £80m on a new supercomputer specifically to identify businesses and individuals who are identified as having potential tax discrepancies.
Fee Protection Insurance covers you against the cost of any professional fees that you incur as a result of being investigated by HMRC, which can, unfortunately, run to thousands of pounds. As a Practice we want to protect you from this burden, that’s why we recommend that our clients take out our Fee Protection Insurance policy. It’s quick and easy to get covered and costs a fraction of the average investigation.
Chambers accountancy services
As well as providing the above accounting and tax services directly to barristers, we also have the benefit of acting for a number of barrister’s chambers. Whilst we are based in Central Manchester we advise chambers and barrister clients both within the Northern Circuit and Nationwide. This gives us a detailed understanding of the inner workings of chambers and the interaction between the services provided by chambers to their members and our accountancy offering to our barrister clients.
For more information see http://www.jackross.com/bar-chambers/
Forensic accounting
Jack Ross provides support to a whole host of solicitors and barristers to help their clients by providing business valuation reports and loss of profit calculations, whether as a Single Joint Expert or being directly engaged by either party. Recently we have seen an increasing number of appointments in assisting parties with reviewing and responding to initial Form E Disclosures and challenging valuations or profit calculations prepared by others.
*Concerva Limited is an Independent Financial Adviser, authorised and regulated by the Financial Conduct Authority. FCA Register No. 196679.