Why we educate and empower our clients

You may be thinking, ‘why do I need to learn about tax if I’m paying my accountant to do it for me?’, and you raise a fair question. We understand that the purpose of our service is to take away the stress and workload associated with doing your own tax return, but we still think it is really important that you know the ‘why’ of what we are doing.

No one can be an expert in everything (that’s why it’s important to have specialist advisers like us to help out!) but CPA has identified that many Australian taxpayers are not ‘tax literate’ enough, and often make mistakes in their tax returns and other financial activities because there is missed revenue or unclaimed tax deductions.

Even if you have a brilliant business accountant, these mistakes can still lead to double-handling, missed tax deduction opportunities or costly business decisions. It can also make you more vulnerable to scams or “get rich quick”/”pay zero tax” schemes that can get you into serious trouble.

These are just examples of the problems that can arise if you aren’t on top of the basics in key areas of tax and legislation matters, and it’s why we’re so passionate about making sure taxpayers in our broader community understand those key fundamentals – regardless of whether they are our clients or not.

So here is why we educate and empower our clients on the ‘why’:

• We can build a long term relationship with our clients based on trust, where they know we understand how their business works and take care of what’s important to them. There’s no sneaky, under-handedness that will put their business, their savings and their family at risk.
• They are aware of how our service will benefit them from both a personal and business perspective – it makes the value of what we do very transparent.
• It’ll empower them to make informed decisions around their tax, legal and financial matters outside of our service. For example, some of our clients manage and operate their own bank accounts, and only use our bookkeeping service to lodge their Business Activity Statements.
• It gives our clients a much more accurate picture of their financial health, which helps them make informed decisions.
• It demonstrates the reasoning behind our whole process and the steps we take. We don’t make decisions for the sake of it – everything is carefully thought out to ensure the best possible outcome for our clients.
• If our clients don’t know what we do, and what we can do, then they can’t accurately communicate the other ways in which they might need help from us. Having these discussions can prompt them to ask us the right questions that then turns into solving other problems and resolving other issues behind the scenes.
• We can bring new ideas and solutions to the table that suit the way you like to run things.
• They become more financially savvy, and better business owners overall.

At Aintree Group, we don’t use jargon to avoid isolating our clients – everyone deserves to understand what’s going on with their hard-earned money behind the scenes. Our goal is not just to provide expertise, guidance and advice, but also clarification and education on the important tax, legal, business and financial matters that informs that advice, so that they understand what we can achieve together.

Just because we can do most things for our clients, doesn’t mean they should be out of the loop and not know the ‘why’ – after all, they’re the ones dedicating all the time, effort and resources to building that business in the first place.

And, in accordance with our values to be courageous custodians of our community, we also take steps to empower and educate the wider community, beyond our client base. We write blog posts on timely and important issues, and run free seminars to make important industry news more accessible and approachable.

Based on Accountants Daily’s article.