What Happens If My Accountant Is Negligent? Can I Make A Professional Negligence Claim?
Mistakes by professionals in finance can be costly. Large fines can be incurred from HMRC for missing deadlines or for errors found in the figures. Who is responsible for any problems incurred? Can you blame your accountant or are they immune?
A professional negligence solicitor takes on claims against those accountants who do not adhere to the standards expected from their profession.
The most frequent areas in which accountancy negligence arises are; failures to detect fraud, incorrect valuations of shares and bad tax advice. This is by no means the entire list where the services of a professional negligence claim solicitor are required.
Where the client is running a business the situation may, in addition, have commercial implications. As these type of claims often carry large amounts of compensation, an accountant has a lot to loose if a claim is made against them.
Let's look at the particularly large scale example of Ernst & Young, one of the 'big four' accounting firms who, in 2005 were sued