Your personal tax information needs to be guarded for obvious reasons. The last thing you would ever want is for your financial information to get into the hands of the wrong person. For this reason, it is absolutely essential that you only indulge in financial interactions with the right individuals.
Apart from banks, accountants are probably the one other individuals who you will be giving your personal tax information to. In order to ensure that you are really dealing with trusted accountants and not fraudsters, you need to take a few matters into consideration. One of the main factors that will show you that a chartered accountant or a small business accounting firm is actually safe to deal with is their level of communication and how well they treat their potential clients.
If you call in and don’t get an answer every time, or if you send multiple emails and get no response, then they are probably not the best firm for you to deal with. Good communication is absolutely essential when it comes to determining whether an accounting firm is really worth investing in or not. Apart from good communication, you will also want to get direct reviews from previous clients. If previous clients were thoroughly satisfied with the way they were treated, then it is very likely that you will be satisfied as well.
If the firm you want to inquire about is fairly new or you can’t find any reviews on the internet then you can always request them for referrals.
Furthermore, if you want to be perfectly sure that you are able to trust these tax professionals then you should read the agreement you are signing with them carefully. If there is no mention of a refund then you should ask them whether they will be able to get their money back if the work is done incorrectly or not submitted by the requested date. You should always keep all your options open and ensure you have the legal right to take action if your work is not done as requested.
Should I Give my Information Online?
Believe it or not, 90% of Canadians filed their taxes online in the year of 2017. Online interactions are completely safe and nowadays with technology getting better all the time it is definitely safe to submit your information online. However, this does not mean that you can go ahead and be careless. Whenever you are having an online meeting, filling an online form, or even discussing private information on the phone you should ensure no one is listening and you should also clear your cache and log out of your accounts after every use.