A big hand

I recently 'lost' a self-employed personal tax client Mr D to another accountant.

Mr D refused to pay an economic rate for the work involved on his affairs.

He was a typical 'carrier bag' case with very little proper record-keeping during the year so preparing the accounts and tax return involved a painstaking trawl through the bank account cheque book stubs invoices and receipts.

He refused to pay the full amount of the last bill that I raised and in the end I wrote off a quarter of it and told him that I no longer wanted to act for him.

The new accountant has now asked for copies of the accounts and returns for the past six years and various schedules from working papers such as the build up of the capital allowances pool during that period together with my tax...