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Hi Grace,
I applied for my tax agent code a year ago. The initial letter back did take a month to arrive (there have been many cuts in HMRC personnel in the last few years and response time generally are slower to correspondance than they have been in the past). HMRC made a mistake on my company name and the whole thing took a further 4 weeks to resolve.
Also I've had recent applications for client authorisation codes that have take 3 weeks to arrive, not the publicised 7-14 days. In order to apply for client authorisation you need the client's Unique Tax Reference and NINO, along with a postcode. It is worth checking they all of these to hand, sometimes that is not the case!
So if it goes smoothly, you have the time, but if not you will need to chase HMRC hard and not be put off by call centre excuses.
With regards what else you might need.
Is it just the self assessment that is needed? If the accountant has done the financial statements and the tax return before and the client the day to day books, will they they been expecting you to do the financial statements and adjusted trading accounts for tax purposes, including any expense calculations and capital alowances? Also have you checked what they mean by keeping the books. It may seem obvious, but a lot of smaller clients don't have any idea what is really involved in completing the tax return and just expect you to do a whole years bookkeeping as well as everything else.
It also may be that they no idea how their motoring or use of the home for business purposes deductions have been calculated or what fixed assets are owned by the business / have be written off for tax purposes, so you will need the information from the accountant to answer these questions.
Finally, how are you going to manage the tax calculation process and providing your client with the self assessment information to authorise prior to submitting their return (an HMRC requirement). If you are going to do this manually, do you have all your paperwork templates in place to do this or if you are going to use software are you familiar with how it all works?
It is all achievable in the time you have, but it is worth being clear up front as to what work needs to be undertaken, so that you can manage your time (and stress) accordingly.
It is worth noting that although some clients do give you the time in the summer to get their tax returns completed, many clients also leave things to late in the year and just expect you to fit everything in. Setting a date in you letter of engagement that makes clear the deadline you expect to receive their information for future years may help manage the process later down the line.
Good luck with the return, I am sure you will do a great job.
Kathryn
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