AAT + ACCA

Hello everyone
If I am AAT qualified and just starting ACCA, can I apply for the AAT licence and trade as self-employed? Or is it then restricted because I've chosen to continue on studying ACCA? I have got 4 years relevant experience in practice, so I am not sure if you can trade under AAT licence, while studying ACCA? Does anybody know?
If I am AAT qualified and just starting ACCA, can I apply for the AAT licence and trade as self-employed? Or is it then restricted because I've chosen to continue on studying ACCA? I have got 4 years relevant experience in practice, so I am not sure if you can trade under AAT licence, while studying ACCA? Does anybody know?
0
Comments
ACCA do not like their students offering accountancy and bookkeeping services. The information is in the ACCA handbook but briefly they will allow you to do basic bookkeeping jobs for your clients providing you are not making management decisions. VAT returns can be prepared but this has to be as a result of doing the basic bookkeeping and must be generated from the accounting package. This would exclude you from doing the more complicated VAT schemes such as Partial Exemption, Marginal VAT etc.
After qualifying with ACCA, you will need to apply for an ACCA practice certificate. This would involve post qualification experience and more forms to complete. My understanding of this process is quite difficult and they don't make the process easy for the applicants.
If you are serious about starting up a practice you will need to make the decision as to whether you put it on hold and go the ACCA route of do not apply for ACCA and become an AAT licenced member. The only real difference would be that as an AAT member you can't offer auditing services.
Hope that helps.
This is because many ACCA practising certificate holders cannot do audit as they do not have an audit practising certificate (they only have one for accounts and tax).
Consequently I would say the only major difference would be that with AAT potentially some of your clients may get the loan/mortgage application rejected if the lender does not accept an AAT member as a qualified accountant. Also, some clients are adamant that they only want an ACCA chartered member preparing their accounts and tax returns.
You might also need to check your employment contract that you're not breaching any anti competition clauses.
I believe the ACCA recently fined someone around £25k for various reasons (including not having an ACCA practising certificate):
http://www.accaglobal.com/content/dam/ACCA_Global/Members/news/2018/January/Post News Release - Martin.pdf