It's easy for us to tell you how good we are, but don't take our word for it.

Below are some of the things our clients, associates and business contacts  say about us:

Alan Young is a unique fellow.

From the day he came upon Enterprise Nation, it’s been a pleasure to know him. He is incredibly giving of his time, experience and expertise.

I have stopped counting the number of home businesses who have got in touch with me to comment on his approachable style and straightforward advice.

Alan shows perfectly how business should be done; give … and ultimately you will receive. Alan deserves to receive a mountain of work and praise!

We have been using 1^st Addition Accountantancy since our company was formed. They have been absolutely fantastic, from advising us about how to best use our Sage invoicing software, to setting up our payroll, and everything in between!

Disillusioned and fed up with our previous accountants, we have recently moved to Alan Young at 1st Addition as I had been impressed by Alan's talks at various networking events.

We moved to Alan in the middle of the month and he had instructed our old accountants, in good time, that the move was happening - however as month end approached Alan had not received any paperwork. It soon became obvious that the monthly payroll was in jeopardy - however Alan went the extra mile and out of his way to ensure everyone got paid - on the Friday he and the Financial Director spent many an hour on the phone working through the figures and getting bank details as well as getting the online banking details of the company to fast track the payments.

Eventually everyone was paid ahead of schedule and without hassle and this is due to the extra efforts of Alan and his team - I am now convinced I have made the right decision and I look forward to many years of success with Alan and 1st Addition to guide me!

Alan gave me some great advice for my business and as a result I shall be using his services.

I would thoroughly recommend Alan, he has a lovely gentle quiet nature but with a wicked sense of humour which is rare for an accountant.

Alan goes that extra mile for all his clients and business partners and I very much enjoy working with him.

His knowledge of legislation is second to none and so really can ensure you are not paying too much VAT and Tax. Alan writes many articles and so is constantly up to date on legislation.

If you want a proactive accountant, then contact Alan, you won't be disappointed.

Alan gave me sound business advice, without expecting anything in return. I will definately be referring people to him in the future.

Alan Young of www.1staddition.co.uk has prepared reports for Lime One before, but this week he certainly excelled client expectations. He has prepared the report in record time, run various other figures through for us at very short notice and generally put himself out for us. We were able to move on a shareholder dispute much faster as a result of his hard work and expertise. Alan is a very good accountant but it is the attention to detail and turning around a report in under a day that makes him really stand out from the crowd.

Our client is made up with the work he has carried out and we certainly will be covering his work in a feature on our web site as well as a mention in our newsletter this month. Proactive and accountant are words you don't see in the same sentence very often, but Alan is everything you would wish to see in the profession, no messing about and no hanging about when work needs to be done. 

A big thank you to Alan for giving me straight-forward advice on setting up Essential Assistant as a limited company and for assisting me in making this happen.

I have been very impressed by the standard of services provided by 1st Addition. Their level of commitment to find the most efficient solution for our tax matters, as well as general financial matters, has greatly exceeded our expectations, resulting in significant savings.

They are very prompt in responding to any issues and concerns, and do not hesitate to go beyond the call of duty. I would highly recommend using their services for corporate accounting and taxation.

I made a post yesterday, mainly out of curiosity, asking who is limited company, who is sole trader and the reasons why, pros and cons etc.

As a result of additional questions arising in the thread Alan Young has posted some excellent, clear advice, which I and others learned a lot from.

A great example of someone being generous with their time and expertise to help others..and boosting their own credibility and reputation at the same time. 

Fantastic advice, clearly put in plain English. Thank you Alan you are a true gent. It is so rare to find someone who understands such a technical area and can communicate complex information so well. There is so much advice that is contradictory out there. You really seem to have your finger on the pulse.

The subjects of tax and expenses have attracted more questions and comments than any other topics on the Forum. And many of the questions have been answered (extremely well) by Alan Young of 1st Addition Accountancy, who knows far more about working from home than any other accountant I have ever come across.

So, we know our clients are happy with what we do, but just what is that?

What sort of things can we do for them, and, therefore, what might we be able to do for you?

Below are a few genuine case studies, using actual figures, to give an indication of the nature of the assistance given.

It is also worth noting, that these may help to answer that most common of questions; "Do I need an accountant to do by accounts / tax for me, or can I do it myself"?

Unfortunately, they also confirm that it can be equally painful to employ the wrong accountant to represent you and deal with your taxation affairs!

Self Employed Sole Contractor

AB was a self employed contractor, working in the Construction Industry, under the CIS taxation system. As a result, he was suffering tax at source on his income received from the main contractor.

Each year, the client went into his local Tax Office, armed with a box of receipts, where he then spent the whole day with an HMRC employee, completing his Self Assessment Tax Return.

Of course, in this situation, the Revenue employee can only work with what they are given, and within fairly tight time constraints. As a result, even though he had suffered tax in advance, under CIS, the client still came away with a tax bill of £1,487.

Following on from a recommendation by one of his fellow contractors, who already used us to complete his accounts and returns, the client approached us to do the following year's work for him.

In that second year, coincidently, the business turnover was just £25 different from the previous one.

In spite of this, because we were able to claim everything the client was entitled to, we were able to secure a refund of £842.

Outcome

The client was £2,329 better off, tax wise, through using our services, we only charged him £250 for this, and he paid us out of his refund!  In addition to this, the client saved a whole day of their time, previously spent sitting around the local Tax Office.

Larger Self Employed Business

WW was a larger business, run on a self employed basis, from home, with approximately 25 employees.

The client was originally recommended to us by her mortgage broker, as he felt that her taxation liability was totally disproportionate to her level of income. (She had asked him to arrange a remortgage for her, so that she could pay her £45,000 tax bill for that year).

Although the client was some 200 miles away from our offices, we attended the premises, and performed a full review of the accounting records for the current year, and three previous years, from commencement of trade, to establish the nature of the problem.

Our findings were as follows:

• The previous accountants had submitted estimated returns, for the first 2 years, which had resulted in an HMRC compliance investigation.
• During the investigation, they had provided misleading information, which resulted in an HMRC determination, estimating £85,000 profit, when the actual result was closer to £25,000.
• The main reason for the problem was that (due to low profit levels in the startup years) the client had substantially remortgaged one of her properties, in order to provide a series of cash injections into the business. The accountants had treated this as taxable income.
• In spite of the above, the accountants had the cheek to write to the client and advise her that they could not complete the year 3 accounts, as there were a number of small items they couldn't tie up.

Outcome

Following our initial visit, the client received an immediate refund of a little over £15,000. There is currently a further refund pending in the region of £28,000.

Small Self Employed One Man Band Business

MB came to us, in June 2009, with a quite scary tax situation.

He was a relatively small, one man band, business, and, since April 2007, he had been paying £1,000 A MONTH standing order to HMRC to cover his tax liability.

We advised him to cease his sole trader business and transfer it to a new limited company, with immediate effect. We also completed his last year's accounts, in order to rationalise his taxation liability.

The client worked from home, and had two rooms, out of seven, totally dedicated to his business. The previous accountant had been claiming £10 per week to cover 'Use of Home As Office' allowance. However, since 2004, you can no longer put in a round sum allowance of more than the HMRC specified rate (currently £3, but, back then, it was £2) though you can claim considerably more, if you can substantiate the claim. We looked at all relevant expenditure, and were able to claim, quite legitimately, over £2,800 when the previous accountant had only claimed £520, which, in itself, had increased the risk of an HMRC compliance enquiry, due to the use of incorrect 'round sum' amounts.

Due to the claiming of extra expenses such as this, we were able to reduce the client's overall tax liability for the year, however, the key saving arose from the transfer of the business to the limited company. Self Assessment Tax is paid in advance, in 6 monthly installments. Corporation Tax is payable in arrears, thereby, potentially, giving a tax payment holiday period.

Outcome

The client's tax liability was reduced to some £5,000, as payments on account were no longer required for the following year. As he chose to continue his standing order, the total liability could now be satisfied by January 2010, after which he would not be required to pay any further tax (Corporation Tax) on his profits, until 1 June 2011, at which point (based on current profit levels, CT rates etc) he would expect to pay around £4,500.

Our fee for these services? Less than 10% of the tax we have saved him, AND no more than he was charged by the previous accountant who gave him the inadequte advice in the first place.