Promoted by Wolters Kluwer.
Looking at and reviewing changes to the tax law in Australia can be both simple and difficult at the same time for accountants. It’s simple because, as experts, when you come across a proposed or introduced change, you are able to quickly grasp the concept and add it to your inherent knowledge base.
But it’s difficult because it can take additional time out of your work day finding everything that is important as well as sorting through all the changes that won’t make a difference to your clients. It’s also difficult to master the message to affected clients, in particular those clients that you don’t personally speak to often.
The clear objective when constructing an event for CCH iQ is for the editor to understand the key message that accountants would want to tell their affected clients. Once the understanding of that key message is formed, the potential revenue opportunities grow for an accountant.
Constructing an event
The message itself is the most important part for an accountant to use when moving away from providing solely compliance work for their clients, towards providing future-looking advisory services.
Principally speaking, the easiest way to move towards providing advisory services for clients is to move into an area which you are already an expert. Becoming a tax adviser means completing a laundry list of academic requirements fused with on-the-job training to create an individual who is able to interpret and decipher sometimes complex tax matters into a simple answer.
Interpretation of the tax law is a skill you all possess. However, as mentioned above, all of us are short of time in practice and everyone could always use a little help with getting the message out there to our clients.
As the message is constructed, what flows to help you further is our editor’s goals to provide quality commentary. Simply put, quality commentary gives you the information you need to do your job.
Adding value
Quality commentary saves you time and effort that you would otherwise spend on reading and analysing complex and voluminous legislation and other information sources, trying to understanding it and its potential application to your work.
These values that the editors hold dearly don’t just apply to proposed legislation. CCH iQ also delves into other materials, such as court cases, ATO rulings, and media announcements from all regulators.
Further value is enhanced by accurately distilling and presenting the essential features and messages of the source material and link these connections and relevance to your clients. On top of this, CCH iQ moulds the message to be client-facing, rather than legislative-based, which provides a more subtle approach to enhancing advisory services.
A key distinction between iQ and other CCH resource materials is the interaction of the different tax laws, including how the provisions interrelate to provide an opportunity. The overwhelming majority of your clients operate across many pieces of the tax laws, as well as multiple different laws themselves. So why not have reference materials that do the same?
That’s how CCH iQ adds value; by being client-facing. Having access to this type of platform provides necessary assistance in the two cornerstones of tax advisory consulting work – tax planning and tax compliance.
CCH iQ will assist you in guiding your clients through the uncertain waters of tax changes, so that your clients will be able to:
Client match
The client match software in iQ works behind your practice management software, so that you can potentially provide this added value at scale.
By using the tax return data that already exists in the database, you will be informed which specific CCH iQ events that have occurred recently affect each and every client. This means you won’t miss anyone, and every one of your affected clients will get that key message regarding potential changes to tax law.
As it works with tax return data, you can use the events in iQ as a final touch point of information for those clients you only speak to at tax time. Keeping them informed of situations in their industry is imperative in consolidating the relationship of trust between client and accountant.
Secondly, by working with potential changes to tax law, you are able to get in touch with clients more often during the year to offer them opportunities to pivot or create awareness. And using the client match means that you are not relying on your memory to get that message out to all the affected clients.
To use a current day example, it would have been great to get a message out to the rental property landlords and explain the removal of travel deductions from 1 July 2017.
It would have been awful to have that specific conversation with them when completing their 2018 income tax return, explaining to them that their deduction is no longer available.
Make the move towards providing future-looking advisory services, visit https://www.cchifirm.com.au/xero/ and inquire today.
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