In 2001 after I joined WJB Chiltern, the tax consultancy now owned by BDO Stoy Hayward, I became head of the Tax Support for Professionals (TSP) team.

The main backbone of the TSP service was Taxline, a tax telephone helpline service. Each day a different member of the team was allocated to answer the phones. Calls came in from accountants wanting advice on all aspects of tax. I recall sharing my admiration of the guys in my team who had the confidence to pick up the Taxline phone. On one occasion I said to John (an older member of the team) that I didn’t think I had a deep enough knowledge across the tax spectrum to answer the Taxline myself. I’ve long remembered his reply as he was evidently quite shocked:

You’re being harsh on yourself Mark. You invariably suggest additional points when we debrief on the calls of the day. And I’ve heard you on the phone often enough to know that you do have a broader knowledge of tax than you give yourself credit for. You wouldn’t have got to where you are otherwise.

John’s comments were not intended to have a long lasting and powerful impact. They were simply his instinctive response to my apparent reluctance to man the Taxline. That, in turn, was partly a reflection of a lack of inner confidence – a common enough feeling for many of us. I’m well over that now! Indeed John’s words have stayed with me and helped force a change in the way that I subsequently described my tax knowledge.

In some respects that conversation was also a catalyst for the creation of the Tax Advice Network. I may well have a good broad knowledge of the tax system but I’m not confident that I am uptodate sufficiently to give advice on which accountants or anyone else can rely. I know sufficient about what’s going on to comment on developments, to write and to lecture but I’m no longer interested in giving definitive advice myself any more. So now I refer anyone who asks me for tax advice to members of my Tax Advice Network.

One of the most powerful factors that affects whether an accountant will refer tax queries to us is the level of confidence that they have. Are they

• Rightly confident that they know enough and that there is little chance of being wrong?
• Over confident and reluctant to seek a second opinion?
• Lacking in confidence and worried that clients will think less of them if they admit what they don’t know? (They’ll certainly be unhappy if the accountant gets it wrong, that’s for sure. Most clients recognise that their accountant is like their GP and that sometimes there is a need to go to a specialist);

What about you?