What Your Accountant Should Have Asked You By Now

It is late August. The corporate tax return for a 31 December year end is due on 30 September.

Here is a question worth sitting with for a moment. In the last six weeks, has your accountant come to you, or have you come to them?

The answer to that is more diagnostic than anything on the return itself.

What should already have happened

Five weeks out from the deadline, a competent accountant is not waiting. They have closed the books for the period, produced a draft taxable income figure and formed a view on which items are not straightforward.

More importantly, they have brought that to you. Not because you asked. Because it is the point at which decisions need to be made and there is still time to make them.

That contact usually contains three things. Here is the expected taxable income. Here are the items I need you to explain or confirm. Here is roughly what you should expect to pay, so you can plan for it.

If you have received something like that, you are in good hands and the rest of this article is confirmation rather than news.

If you have not, that is worth understanding rather than worrying about.

The questions a good accountant asks

These are the ones that require your knowledge rather than the accountant’s. Nobody can answer them from a bank statement.

The mixed transactions. Costs paid from a personal account for the business, or from the business account for something personal. These are ordinary and they are everywhere in owner-run companies. What matters is that they are identified and treated correctly rather than quietly categorised by someone guessing.

The large and unusual items. Any transaction significantly outside the normal pattern. A single large payment can move the taxable income figure meaningfully and it usually has a story behind it that only you know.

Anything between your own entities. Money moved from one company you own to another, or work done by one for the other. The treatment is not obvious and it carries documentation requirements, which we cover in related-party transactions.

The items where the deduction is limited or conditional. Entertainment, certain expenses with a personal element, anything where the rule is not simply that a business cost is deductible. Our guide to deductible and non-deductible expenses covers where those lines fall.

What changed this year. A new entity, a new market, a new payment processor, a change in how you pay yourself. Each of these can change the position and none of them show up as a flag in an accounting system.

Notice what these have in common. They all require a conversation. An accountant who has not had one with you has either decided none of these apply to your business, or has not looked.

Why silence is not neutral

There are two explanations for hearing nothing, and they look identical from the outside.

The first is that the work is done, nothing needed your input and everything is straightforward. Possible, though rare in an owner-run business with any complexity.

The second is that the work has not started.

You cannot tell which one you are in without asking, and the cost of the two is very different. This is the core of the problem with reactive accounting. It is not that reactive accountants do bad work. It is that you have no way of knowing which situation you are in until the point at which it is too late to change the answer.

A proactive relationship removes that uncertainty as a by-product. You know where things stand because you were told, not because you checked. Our guide on when to bring in an accountant covers the wider version of this decision.

The one number you should have

If you take nothing else from this, take this.

You should know your expected corporate tax payment before September. Not the exact figure to the dirham, but close enough to plan around.

That number is what gives you options. Knowing it in August means you can move money in stages, look at where cash is sitting across entities and make a calm decision if the amount is uncomfortable. Learning it on 25 September means you have whatever is in the account and no time to change it.

We wrote separately about what to do when the money is not there, and almost every good outcome in that article depends on having known the number early.

If you do not have that figure today, that is the thing to ask for this week. It is a reasonable request and the answer should not take long.

Why this happens even with competent firms

It is tempting to read all of this as being about bad accountants. Frequently it is not.

A great deal of accounting in the UAE is priced and structured as compliance work. The engagement is to prepare and submit a return. That is what was quoted for and that is what gets delivered. Within that scope, waiting for the client to send documents and then processing them is not negligence. It is the job as defined.

The gap is that most owners think they bought something else. They think they bought someone who watches the position and tells them when something needs attention. That is advisory work, and it is a different service with a different cost and a different rhythm.

Neither party is being dishonest. The service was never specified in a conversation, so each side assumed a different one.

This is worth knowing because it changes what you do about it. If your accountant is silent because the engagement is compliance-only, asking for more within the same arrangement will not fix it. The useful move is to be explicit about what you actually want, and to find out whether it is on offer. Sometimes it is. Sometimes the answer to that question is itself the answer.

What to do if the answer is uncomfortable

Some readers will finish this and realise they have heard nothing since a set of documents was handed over in the spring.

That is a common position and it is not yet a problem. There are five weeks, which is enough to establish where things stand and to act on what you find. It stops being enough somewhere in mid-September.

Ask three questions, in writing. What is my expected taxable income for the period. What do you still need from me. What do you expect the payment to be.

Clear answers mean the work is in hand and you can stop thinking about it. Vague answers, or answers that arrive slowly, tell you something you probably already suspected, and you still have time to do something about it.

Frequently asked questions

What should my accountant be doing before the corporate tax deadline?

Contacting you first. By late August a good accountant has closed the books, produced a draft taxable income figure, raised the items that need your input and told you the expected payment amount so you can plan cash. If all of that is waiting on you to ask, the relationship is reactive.

When should I know how much corporate tax I owe?

Well before the deadline, ideally by early September for a 30 September filing. The number drives the cash planning, so learning it in the final week removes every option you might have had.

What questions should an accountant ask about my expenses?

The ones where the treatment is not automatic. Mixed personal and business costs, entertainment, related-party charges, anything paid from a personal account and any large or unusual item. These need your explanation because the accountant cannot see the intent behind a transaction.

Is it normal to hear nothing from your accountant for months?

It is common and it is not good. Silence usually means either the work has not started or nothing has been found worth raising, and only one of those is acceptable. Neither should be left as an assumption.

Can I change accountants close to a filing deadline?

It is possible and it happens more often than people think, but it is easier the earlier it is done because the incoming firm needs the records and time to review them. Leaving it to the final fortnight limits what anyone can do well.

What does a proactive accountant actually look like?

They tell you things before you ask, they raise problems while there is still time to act on them, and they explain the reasoning rather than only the conclusion. The test is simple. Over the last six months, how many useful things did you learn without having to chase for them?

The point

Most owners judge an accountant on whether the filing was submitted. That is the wrong test, because almost everyone submits something.

The better test is whether you found things out in time to do something about them. Deadlines that were flagged while there was room to act. Numbers that arrived before they were urgent. Questions asked in August rather than in the last week of September.

That is a different service from filing, and it is the one that actually changes outcomes. If you are not sure which one you are getting, book a call here and we will tell you where you stand.