Question about situation re. accountant concerning tax return

MarcusMaximus

I hope it is appropriate to post this here.

I recently had a brief informal consultation with an accountant to discuss the possibility of my using their services for submitting my tax return. Up to now I have always submitted my own returns as my business is fairly straight-forward but this year I thought I might get an accountant to look over what I had done. I had a tax audit some years ago although I have always been tax-compliant to the best of my ability.

During the conversation it became apparent that I have made a couple of errors in terms of how I was doing things around the claiming of expenses. Nothing very serious and not involving a lot of money but enough to cause me to re-think my approach, which I will be doing from now on.

I will most likely submit my own return without using the accountant as I think I have enough information to do this properly now. My concern is whether the accountant is likely to inform Revenue of those past errors, i.e. do they have a duty or agenda to report anything they hear, even something pretty minor they are told in an informal initial discussion, or are they bound by any principle of confidentiality? I am also wondering if I should contact him again to discuss this, or whether I would be better to leave well enough alone?

Many thanks for any thoughts or advice!