Marcus Richards
The Tax Advice Network which I chair is a group of independent tax specialists who power the FindATaxAdviser.online website. This is a free to use resource for anyone seeking specialists who can provide tax advice worth paying for.
Tell us about yourself?
I started life as a children’s party entertainer, then qualified as a chartered accountant. I quickly decided to specialise in tax and I later became a tax partner in a large London firm and was then headhunted to join another one.
In time I moved to a large tax consultancy where I ran the tax support for professionals team. A few years later I decided to replicate that service and to make it easier and more cost effective for everyone to access specialist tax advisers.
We do this through our highly ranked website and without employment costs or any other significant overheads.
If you could go back in time a year or two, what piece of advice would you give yourself?
When one approach to marketing stops paying off, try another one.
What problem does your business solve?
For the public and business owners: We make it easy to find the best tax specialists able to help you with your tax issues, solve your tax problems and keep you out of trouble with HMRC. Few accountants have the necessary expertise to do this across a wide range of tax specialisms.
For accountants: We make it easy for them to find the specialist back up they sometimes need (just like your GP sometimes needs to check with or to send you to a consultant)
For independent tax advisers: We provide a very cost-effective lead generation facility.
What is the inspiration behind your business?
During my time in the large tax consultancy I realised how difficult and expensive it was for smaller firms of accountants to access specialist tax support. And how important it was that they did this to avoid professional negligence claims.
I also noted that more and more good tax specialists were leaving the larger firms to run their own consultancies. They needed help to boost their profiles and to attract the sort of work best suited to their particular specialisms. (We have members covering over 100 areas of tax on our website)
What is your magic sauce?
Literally – I am a member of The Magic Circle and was Treasurer for almost 8 years
So I do aim to add a touch a magic to everything I do 😉
More specifically, our website is super easy and fast to use by anyone who wants to find the right tax adviser to solve their issue. There is no registration requirement and nothing to pay to use our website.
And for tax advisers seeking more leads, our website is close to the top of the search results.
What is the plan for the next 5 years? What do you want to achieve?
To continue growing the traffic to the website – this interview should help 😉
And to continue growing the membership. We want to get to 200 tax adviser members.
What is the biggest challenge you’ve faced so far?
Our original website needed a huge revamp to make it mobile friendly. It took time originally to spec out the website and this was even more complex second time around. But worth it in the end.
How do people get involved/buy into your vision?
We want to become the go-to website whenever anyone needs specialist tax advice. The checkatrade or trustatrader for tax expertise in the UK.
