tax Accountant cost

can't really tell because what is "nothing complicated" is not always the case.

having said that, i guess it depends on what has to be done and what is proposed.

either way, €500 seems like a fair price.

if it's simple, I'll do it for €499 for you 😁

With just one property, and as long as the expenses aren't in some way unusual, why not do it yourself?

I have filled in a few Form 11 over the years.

Yes, they do look daunting, but are doable.

It’s fine, but you will probably find someone to do it for half that if you phone around.
If you have all your expenses and income together, it’s unlikely to be any more than an hours work.

Most of the Form 11 will be left blank, as it’s not relevant.

There is huge variation in the amount of work required to prepare an income tax return depending on the circumstances. In many cases €1000 wouldn’t cover the half of it.

But this was a PAYE worker who simply needed to declare some rental income on a single property. Unless there was some unusual factors I think €200 would be a reasonable fee.

It all adds up! You could do 8-10 of those a day, and it’s recurring business.
Next year, it will take half the time, because you will already have ROS access for them and you won’t need much client engagement.

You would be surprised the more valuable business that can come from having these small clients. It is how country accountancy practices have been run for decades.

Charge over the odds and the client balks, as has happened here. You have lost that client and potential referrals.

I think you are under rating it. I know many well established accountancy firms who routinely take on this kind of business.

If you were to do 8 of those returns a day, and dedicate just two days a week to this derisory business that is still €115k+ p.a. with very little outlay. If we pushed it to €250 per Form11 we would have revenues of closer to €150k ex VAT. for 2 days a week over 45 weeks in the year.

I actually think it’s quite good business. You would need to develop systems for gathering the information from clients efficiently, and ideally you might hope to take on a junior staff member to manage the day to day aspects. But even if you were to do the lot yourself, I think it would be reasonably lucrative and stable business, with opportunity to fill the other three days with what ever you want.

What if next year doesn't take half the time but takes double on account of various queries that arises

Client then baulks when their fee has doubled, you have to go explaining why it's double but they thought their annual fee was x costing you more time (and time is money) in getting this higher fee

With the time onboarding , AML, billing etc. takes along with the real tax work in a proper practice the fees can't feasibly be €200 even for the most basic cases

At €200 you won't be putting in the time to give proper advice as well (e.g. is their employment pensionable, could make an AVC against this income to offset the tax liability on the rental income) so it would be a bottom of the barrel service level and firms might not want to be giving these basement level services, they're available online from the likes of tax assist and irish tax rebates

Also, the feedback from agencies is that talent is very scarce. I think established practices will continue more and more to be selective.

Here’s the other thing. At €200, the first year is a loss leader. A senior staff member is going to have to meet with the client to discuss their situation. The OP may sound simple, but questions still need to be asked by a professional, such as the type of expenses, what’s allowable, set up depreciation calculations, then there’s tax advice, then passing to a junior, supervising the junior… and the next year the client buggers off and does it themselves 😅

I used to do the likes of this as a nixer for extended family and friends but it became an almighty pain in the hole I gave it up, just claimed since I'm no longer working as an accountant I haven't kept up to date with the rules and regulations.

Getting information from people was a nightmare. Then you get the questions about every scheme they've heard of and every article they read, which of course they don't want to pay for. People hate the idea of paying for professional advice which is a big part of accountancy.

If I was doing this for a living id be looking for at least 500 euro per return

A form 11 really isn’t set up to be completed by Joe Soap. How did you get on completing the Balance Sheet section?

It can be done, as in getting to the end and creating A tax liability/rebate…but as correctly designed… not so easy by Joe Soap.

I used to do it as a nixer back in the day (pre qualified) post working in practice. Young family, extra money seemed like a good thing. I stopped doing it because in quick succession two “clients’ who were both worried how much they’d have to pay got back significant rebates, stiffed me. 😭

A few years later one of them came back looking for help and I took the greatest pleasure telling him to FO. By then was doing well in industry. Ahhh memories 😅

Edit… meant as a response to Buddy.

Yes,easy if you take your time.Lay out a "dummy"return before committing it to paper or online

I'm self employed doing book-keeping and tax returns and I wouldn't charge anything less than €450 unless I was 95% sure there was very little in it and there would be no more to be done during the year. What I find in most cases with the simple Form 11 is that there will still be several queries, phone calls, emails etc throughout the year which doesn't be long adding up timewise. I would also have no issue showing someone how to do it themselves if they wished if it was a very simple return.