How is the typical tax adviser evolving?

Key points

• Typical tax adviser may no longer be from a traditional firm of accountants.
• Social media sites and the internet provide all sorts of tax information.
• Much of the loan charge controversy has been enabled by social media.
• Many sites promote schemes that verge on fraud but how is the taxpayer supposed to know?
• How will the government regulate someone posting advice on YouTube?

What is your mental image of a typical tax adviser? I’m not interested here in age or physical appearance but how he or she goes about giving advice. I suspect for many readers the picture is probably something like this: the adviser probably has some professional qualifications but could well be qualified by experience. They (I don’t like to use the word they in this context but writing ‘he or she’ every time is very cumbersome) probably work for an accountancy firm large or...