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Most people in Europe don't need Lawyers to submit their taxes. In fact, until I started my own company (UK) - I didn't 'submit' taxes. It was calculated (and
by ciaranm 10y ago
Most people in Europe don't need Lawyers to submit their taxes.
In fact, until I started my own company (UK) - I didn't 'submit' taxes. It was calculated (and taken) automatically based on my salary and otherwise declared income.
- charlesdm 10y agoThis depends a lot on the country. For example: I'd say most self employed people in Belgium use an accountant to file their taxes. Some (a subset) of those also have a tax lawyer who helps them optimise certain things. Self employed people (i.e. entrepreneurs) who make decent money will have a tax lawyer, because inevitably, you'll bump into an unfriendly tax collector somewhere down the road.
- emp_zealoth 10y agoFrom my experiences with self-employed people (doctors, hundreds of them - im in an MD-motorcycle club) they will try to write off anything and everything and the accountants are there to talk them out of it
- charlesdm 10y agoThat's only because those tax deductions are often accepted. If one can write off an entire holiday home with a reasonable chance of success, say 80%, then you'd be crazy not to try. If countries don't want that, they should change their laws. In some higher tax countries, a lot of things are technically allowed, because that way they can tax "the little man" a lot and not tax higher earners as much (i.e. doctors, notaries, high earning entrepreneurs, etc).
- Xylakant 10y agoTaxes for self employed people are much more complicated than taxes for salaried employees. Everywhere that I know, taxes from salaries are automatically withheld by the employer - those taxes have probably been calculated by a tax accountant in the first place. There's practically no way you'd need to pay extra taxes if your only income is your salary, so you can opt out of filing taxes. For self-employed people there are many more rules and regulations: How to write off which kind of cost and purchase, filing VAT if required, etc. so that's already cost efficient if you hire someone qualified.
- charlesdm 10y agoAdd to that that most self employed people tend to have certain types of investment income (that could or could not be taxed at a different rate depending on the country you live in), and that complicates things even further.