CA Devesh, Anilkumar Pandya – Chief Financial Officer, Itz Cash

In the lighter vein, it is said that if any professional is not employed anywhere, he can easily say that he is in a consultancy business.

However, on a serious note, it is very important to understand the role and relevance of any consultant in any field and whether it brings any benefit to the organization or not.

In order to know what success the Accounting/Tax consultancy brings to the business, it is important to know the role and relevance of these two consultants.

The Role and Relevance of the Accounting Consultant in business:

“A business without a good accounting is like a man without brain”. A person without brain or mentally challenged may survive but will not have his existence felt. Besides, he is prone to death more likely than any normal person.

Evolution and implementation of International Accounting Standards. Day by day the complexity in business is only increasing and the Government and Accounting Institutes (ICAI), domestic and international, are emphasizing on uniform and transparent accounting for the stakeholders across the globe to understand the accounts in a transparent, uniform and understandable manner.

Therefore, worldwide, efforts have been started in drawing the accounts as per uniform Accounting Standard viz. Indian Accounting Standard, IFRS, etc. which are on the way for implementation as it helps the stakeholders in interpreting the accounts in a uniform manner without ambiguity. 

This has necessitated the role of Accounting consultant to advise on how to book each and every transaction in a more acceptable and as per the Accounting Standard. The role of accounting consultant, therefore, cannot be ignored.

Further, the Accounting consultancy is not restricted in helping to develop appropriate software, but extends to the knowledge transfer to the concerned employees in interpreting the reports generated. Therefore, the Accounting consultants help in:

• Developing and implementing appropriate software as per the entity’s needs and the industry in which it is
• Extracting and interpreting various reports for the senior management to take timely decisions
• Timely payment of various statutory dues along with relevant taxes
• Drawing the Books and final accounts as per mandatory Accounting Standards

The Role and relevance of Tax Consultant:

The role of Tax consultant is also equally important and unavoidable. In today’s dynamic environment, the Tax consultant advises the entrepreneur on various aspects of the business dealing from day to day business (revenue income/expenditure decisions) to setting up manufacturing facilities, mergers & acquisitions, capital income/expenditure decisions, etc. The role of tax consultants has evolved from filing of income tax/sales tax returns to advising on important business decision making. As more and more complexities and competition becomes the part of day to day business, the role of Tax consultants becomes more crucial.

The Tax consultant extends his advice in following core areas, though it is an indicative list and not an exhaustive list:

• Help the foreign entity to set up business in India by rendering end to end service in all the tax laws of the country
• Mergers & Acquisitions. The decision on M & A becomes crucial when the entity would like to consolidate its position and eliminating unnecessary competition while not losing the tax benefits
• Make or buy decision based on the local tax laws.
• Setting up manufacturing facilities in particular part of country to maximize the benefit of tax holiday, if any
• Demergers and spinning off of the unprofitable business without losing the tax advantage
• Corporate restructuring for peaceful separation of big business houses/families without losing the tax advantages
•  Helping Government in formulating a flexible and generally acceptable tax regime in the country
• Advising on the treatment of Direct & Indirect taxes in all above environment

The above indicative list shows how relevant the role of the Tax consultant is in any country in any era.

From the above we can deduce what relevance the role of Accounting/Tax consultancy has in today’s complex and competitive world. The Accounting and Tax consultancy