How to Find an Online Tax Accountant in the UK when Overseas

In this article we show how to find an online tax accountant in the UK when you live overseas.

Whether you are a landlord, business partner, or have sole trader income in the UK, the chances are you will need to file a tax return.

Non residents still pay tax on UK income. And we need to report to HMRC by completing a Self Assessment Tax Return.

For most people, tax returns aren’t a pleasant experience. Repetitive, tear your hair out, monotonous, time consuming and difficult are all words that come to mind.

Not to mention the fact that doing it wrong can lead to getting into trouble with HMRC!

People get fined every year. Not to mention the real possibility of having your assets confiscated.

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Another way

But there is another way: Let somebody do the work for you.

In fact, if you want to take a step toward simplifying your life, paying a qualified professional to deal with your tax return could be one of the best moves you ever make. Particularly, if you live overseas. It’s just one less thing to have to worry about.

In the long run, it will probably even save you money. Professional knowledge can pay. For starters, did you know that the money you pay a tax accountant can actually be claimed as a tax deduction?

And these days everything can be done online, so you are not limited to the shady guy around the corner. You’ve got a choice of service providers located all over the UK. And you can access them no matter where you live in the world.

But more choices often equates to bigger decisions. And muddying the waters even further is the fact that anybody can call themselves an accountant in the UK, regardless of whether or not they possess the correct qualifications.

Essentially, this means you can’t just do a Google search and expect to find the right man for the job. You need a way to separate the wheat from the chaff!

A good place to start is the ICAEW (Institute of Chartered Accountants in England and Wales) Find-a-chartered-accountant service.

This page provides names and contact details for qualified accountants in the UK.

Among other search criteria you can enter specialisations i.e. tax, to see a list of contact details for tax accountants.

Not all of them will be able to fulfil your requirements if you live overseas. Some simply won’t deal with non residents. You are going to need to do a bit of digging to get what you want.

As a minimum you should ask the following three questions:

• Do you provide the service I require?
• Can you prove that you are suitably qualified to do the work?
• How much do you charge?

And it is worth going over these in a bit more detail.

Do you offer the service I require?

Accountants, it turns out, offer many different services, and tend to specialise in particular areas. An accountant that specialises in helping small business raise finances, is unlikely to be the right choice for an expat landlord that just needs help with their self assessment tax return.

And even if they do offer the service you require, they probably won’t offer as higher level of service as an accountant that specialises in your required niche. And in all likelihood they will charge more and take longer to complete the work.

You need to choose an accountant that specialises in services for clients just like you.

Are you qualified?

I’m sure it goes without saying that you don’t want a cowboy doing your tax accounting. HMRC doesn’t take too kindly to late or uncompleted tax return filling. In fact, they tend to deal with it by issuing fines.

You need to find somebody with the right qualifications for the job. And for accountants that means being a member of an industry recognised body. The two you want to look out for are the ICAEW and ACCA (the Association of Chartered Accountants).

How much do you charge?

As part of the research for this article, British Expat Money contacted firms around the UK and asked them how much it would be to complete a tax return for a non resident landlord with a single property in the UK, but with no other UK assets.

Prices ranged from £200 to £500 + VAT (Many expats don’t need to pay VAT).

A few points worth mentioning:

Even though we contacted qualified accountants who specialise in tax via the ICAEW’s website, only about 25% of them were able to provide a quote. A small percentage required further information, but the majority of them didn’t offer the service we required.

That said, the majority of these did offer contact details of somebody who could offer what we were looking for, so in a round about way, it is definitely a good way to find a qualified online tax accountant.

We’d definitely recommend it as the best place to start.

You probably don’t need to spend too much time on British Expat Money to come to the conclusion that we like competitively priced products and services.

With that in mind, you probably won’t be surprised to find out, we couldn’t help following up the most competitively priced quote we received.

The result of which, is that we think we may have found a gem of an accountancy firm for expat Landlords.

Not only, were UK Landlord Tax fees the lowest, but they also specialise in expatriate clients. In fact, according to them, over 50% of their current client base reside overseas.

We found them very knowledgeable and open to our questions, so would recommend them as your first contact for anything property related. You can contact them directly with any questions from here.

And at this point it is probably worth reiterating the fact that there are deadlines to filing tax returns. Your tax return should be completed and submitted to HMRC by the 31 October if you file on paper or by 31 January if you file online.