Switching advisers

Businesses change adviser for ordinary reasons: a better proposal, a change in the business, a relationship that has run its course. The change is easy or hard depending on two things, the terms of your contract and the timing. Neither is a reason to stay with an adviser you have decided to leave, but both repay a careful look before you act.

Check the contract first

Read the termination clause and the renewal clause. You are looking for the notice period and how notice must be given, the renewal date if the letter renews by itself, any minimum term or exit fee, any fee that survives the engagement and attaches to a claim filed later, and the clause on ownership of records. Write the dates down. Giving notice on the wrong date, or in the wrong form, can cost a year.

Timing

The cleanest moment to switch is between claims, after one has been filed and before work on the next begins. A claim in progress raises the question of who finishes it and what is owed for the work so far; the letter may answer it, and if not, agree it in writing before you leave. A review in progress is harder still: the old adviser's help with the review may end with the engagement, and the new adviser will be defending work it did not do. Take advice on timing if either is the case.

Getting your records

Ask for the claim as filed, the calculations, the technical descriptions, the correspondence with the tax authority and the records you supplied, in their original form. The script for requesting your records does this. Ask before you give notice if you can, and certainly before the engagement ends. If the letter makes release conditional on payment, take advice before you decide what to pay; a fee dispute is not improved by being tangled with a records dispute.

Briefing the new adviser

Give the new firm everything: the file above, the old engagement letter, and an honest account of anything the tax authority has said. Ask them the twenty questions as you would any adviser, and get their answers in writing before you sign. If they find something in the old claim that worries them, read correcting a claim and take advice before anyone contacts the tax authority.

Read next

• The script: giving notice to end an engagement
• The question: what happens if we end the engagement?
• Red flag: exit fees that lock you in. Green flag: you can leave with your records