Safety first

Professional expenses insurance comes at a price but many tax advisers consider it essential to have. It does not matter how good an adviser is at dealing with tax investigations the time spent mounts up and even if the outcome is particularly client friendly the client may still baulk at paying the inevitably considerable amount of money for something which he neither asked for nor wanted. What can the adviser do? He can write off the fee but this is hardly cost effective he has a business to run after all. One answer might be to take out professional expenses insurance (PEI) also known as professional fee insurance. This insurance covers the professional fees incurred by an adviser when dealing with tax investigations.

A number of suppliers offer PEI and a selection of them together with their contact details are shown in...