Tax Lawyer v Tax Accountant? (1 Viewer)

[RogueAcademic]

Reading the Australian Financial Review today - the Australian Law Reform Commission upheld legal privilege protection for lawyers. This legal privilege was also extended to tax advice offered by tax accountants.

That got me thinking - the obvious difference between a tax lawyer and a tax accountant is law and numbers. But there would still be significant overlap? A tax accountant would need to know what the law is to know where to put the numbers and a tax lawyer would need to know the numbers to be able to know how to apply the law.

So what's the difference between the advice given between these two professions, particularly now that the law reform commission has acknowledged that advice given by tax accountants should fall under legal privilege too?

 

[velox]

Most tax lawyers have accounting degrees, since a lot of it is accounting.

Call it simplistic but dont tax lawyers take people to court over tax issues and tax accountants can just provide legal tax advice but not in a court of law?

 

[RogueAcademic]

So tax accountants need to know tax law like the back of their hands, as well as the numbers (of course), whereas tax lawyers only do tax litigation? I was under the impression that tax lawyers were an essential part of the general commercial activity, not just litigation when there's trouble, meaning most private firm tax lawyers are only doing tax defence?

 

[subdued123]

the roles can be quite similar. No, Tax lawyers do not just do litigation. I have worked with tax lawyers in a large firm.

Both will provide advice. And in some situations, they are largely competing for the same work. Obviously, the tax accountants will handle the money side.

However, tax lawyers will often say that because they can also help with the legal implications, they are often the better bet in Mergers and Acquisitions - which is where big tax questions arise.

It depends what the client wants. If they want tax auditing or the filling out of tax returns, lawyers won't be very useful.

But if they're doing large transactions, the lawyers are a good bet.