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Sole trader or Ltd. What is the difference in tax payable? Watch this video

If you are starting a new business, are you clear on how you and the business will be taxed?

This short video explains the tax payable on a profit of £50k.

The tax payable will be dependent on whether you set up as an unincorporated entity (sole trader or partnership) or as a legal entity (Limited company (Ltd) or Limited Liability Partnership (LLP)).

All factors should be considered not just any potential tax saving when making the decision including limited liability status and credibility with customers as positives offset by the increased compliance involved with running a Ltd or LLP.

However solely from a tax point of view above a certain profit level (and in most circumstances) the business trading as a Limited company will normally end up paying less tax. WATCH THE VIDEO. 

Written by Nick Mason - Director, Wagner Mason Accountants. 
 

Manage your pay within tax bands and avoid paying tax at 60%

Manage your pay within tax bands and avoid paying tax at 60%

Most individuals receive an amount which is tax free called their Personal Allowance (current tax year 2017/18 is £11.5k). This allowance is gradually reduced for people with income over £100k until it is fully withdrawn on income in excess of £123k (you lose £1 of personal allowance for every £2 that income is above £100k).

Therefore tax paid on that income between £100k and £123k is effectively at 60%.

Example

Joe Bloggs earns £100k from employment in 2017/18 so pays PAYE of £28.7k. He gets a full personal allowance to be used against his salary.

If he gets an extra bonus of £10k then he is over the threshold of £100k so starts to lose his Personal Allowance. He will therefore lose £5k of Personal Allowance which will result in £15k being taxed at 40% (£10k re bonus and £5k re income that previously was at 0%). This will result in £6k PAYE tax being paid on the £10k bonus which is a rate of 60%!

What can you do?

If you’re an owner/manager of a business you could consider:

• Take slightly less income to remain below the threshold (for example rather than take income on 31 March 18 that took you over the threshold you could defer that income to 6 April 2018 so that it formed part of your income for the following tax year)
• Treat the £10k as a loan and repay it in the new Tax year (a Director can borrow up to £10k from a Limited company without it being a benefit in kind as long as repaid within 9 months of the year end)

If you’re a Director/employee of the business not looking to reduce your remuneration you could consider taking the income in excess of £100k as a salary sacrifice (such as child care vouchers or pension contributions).

Make sure you speak to an accountant about remuneration planning on a regular basis. If you know what income you are likely to earn for the Tax year then they can potentially advise the best way to structure that both in terms of timing and how it is taken (e.g. salary/dividend mix).

Setting up a new business right first time

Structure of the business

When starting a business one of the things to think about is the structure of that business.

Do you set up as an unincorporated entity (sole trader or partnership) or as a legal entity (Limited company (Ltd) or Limited Liability Partnership (LLP))?

If you have a partner that will be involved in the business and has available tax allowances then that may impact on the structure you choose.

All factors should be considered not just any potential tax saving when making the decision including limited liability status and credibility with customers as positives offset by the increased compliance involved with running a Ltd or LLP.

However solely from a tax point of view above a certain profit level (and in most circumstances) the business trading as a Limited company will normally end up paying less tax.

The benefit has reduced with the increased dividend tax rates from 6 April 2016.

For example, there are 2 identical husband and wife businesses trading in 2017/18. One is a Limited company and the other is a partnership but both make a pre tax profit of £102,000 before they extract any remuneration. The couple with the partnership pay £5k+ more in tax/NIC than the Limited company with the right profit extraction.

The numbers need to be worked through for specific circumstances.

Other considerations

There are lots of other things to consider when setting up the business. These may include:

Should the business register for VAT and if so what is the most appropriate scheme (standard rate, flat rate) and the timing of the returns (annual/quarterly)

Is the business going to be employing staff so registering as an employer with HMRC, dealing with Auto Enrolment pensions and other employer responsibilities?

Does a shareholder or partnership need to be put in place if there are third parties involved in the business?

How and who is going record the transactions of the business and get ongoing financial information– are you going to use some bookkeeping software such as Kashflow or Xero? Are you going to do the bookkeeping inhouse or use a bookkeeper?

Make sure you speak to an accountant early in the process as they can help you make sure that you set your business up with the structure and processes that are right for you and your business

Increasing profits by increasing sales

Increasing profits by increasing sales

The profit of your business is calculated by the sales of your business less the costs of delivering the sales/running your business. Therefore to increase the profit of your business you can:

1. Increase the sales

2. Reduce the costs

3. A combination of increasing sales and reducing costs

Here we look at increasing sales. There are 3 main ways to increase the sales of your business:

• Increase the number of customers/clients
• Increase the amount they spend (average transaction size and/or increased prices)
• Increase the frequency of transactions per customer (the amount you sell to them i.e. number of sales)

If you increase one factor by say 10% then overall sales go up by 10% BUT if you increase all 3 factors by 10% then sales increase by 33%.

Therefore to get the biggest impact it’s worthwhile not just focusing on one particular way of increasing sales.

A good starting point for this is understanding how many customers you have, what they spend and how often you sell to them in a given period. Also important is what costs are associated with these sales so what profit to you make on each customer. This may then highlight the type of customers that are profitable and enable you to make decisions on what actions you could take going forward.

If you don’t have this information available then speak to your accountant as they will be able to help you access this information both historically and on an ongoing basis.

Why profit doesn't equal cash!

Ever wondered why if you’ve made a profit of £50k why there isn’t £50k in your bank account?

The reason is something called 'working capital' which is the cash tied up in the day to day running of the business.

Watch the video below to see the benefit on the 'cash in your business' by managing your working capital.

Written by Nick Mason - Director, Wagner Mason Accountants.

Are you on the VAT Flat Rate Scheme? Make sure you watch this!

IMPORTANT CHANGES: VAT Flat Rate Scheme

Are on the VAT Flat Rate Scheme and don’t buy many goods? Have you reviewed whether it is worth staying on the scheme post 1 April 2017.

Watch this short video to see how you may be losing money.

Know your numbers to grow your business

Do you know how your business is doing on a daily/weekly/monthly basis? or do you wait until your accountant prepares your accounts once a year after the year end?

Your books or figures are signposts to growing your business, making more profit and avoiding cashflow problems. What would be really useful for you to know for your business? I am not talking about the P&L document you may already receive and never look at I am talking about a regular report that will help you stay on target and maximise profit, a document that;


1. Compares actuals against something relevant such as a forecast or the same period last year/last month
2. Includes the key pieces of financial information that lets you decide;
   

• Are you concentrating your efforts in the areas that are the most profitable? (Turnover, gross profit and gross profit % by income stream)
• Are your overheads the right level for your business? (Major overhead costs by category)
• Are there potential bad debts if you don’t take action? (Overdue sales invoices)
• Are you risking supplier relationships or being put on stop? (Overdue supplier payments)
• Are there any spikes in expenditure that need to be managed? (Cash flow forecast)
• Are you on course to deliver the numbers you need? (A forward P&L forecast)
• Is there to help you make decisions about the business (bidding for certain work, major capital expenditure etc.)

Think about what financial information you need on a regular basis to help you understand how your business is doing? And are you able to access that information easily and whenever you want?


For example. As an accountancy firm the key pieces of financial information for us include:


1. Actual invoiced sales versus monthly billing target
2. Our bank balance
3. Any unpaid sales invoices (though most of our clients are on standing order)




Some business are much more complex in that they may have several income streams, costs may be more volatile, the business may be growing or shrinking. For these types of businesses having regular management accounts will be more relevant than a few KPIs like ours.


With the excellent cloud bookkeeping software that is available these days, such as Kashflow, Xero and Quickbooks, it is a lot easier to have relevant and timely financial information whenever you want.


When did you last think about what financial information is key to your business and if you are able to access that information easily? List the key things you want to know to help you improve your business and speak to your accountant about how to create easy access to that information so you can use those numbers to your advantage.

Could your Ltd reduce its corporation tax?

Do you take any proactive action to reduce the amount of corporation tax your Limited company pays?

Are you making sure that the Limited company is taking all the necessary action to minimise the amount of corporation tax payable:

• Ensuring all legitimate business expenses are captured (business mileage, cash expenses etc)
• Any major equipment (capital) purchases planned around the year end are timed to make use of capital allowances
• Other legitimate business costs re the Directors are considered (e.g. Relevant Life cover, Child care vouchers)
• Company paying into a pension for the Directors (see below)

If there are sufficient cash/profit in the business after the Directors have extracted what they need in terms of salary/dividends then the company paying into a pension is a good way reducing corporation tax and transferring cash from the Ltd co to the Director. It is worth speaking to a Financial Adviser to get advice on pensions.

The company can pay up to £40k in 2017/18 plus any unused allowances brought forward from the previous 3 tax years.

Case study: Client with highly profitable Ltd and large cash balances and making minimal pension contributions. Met with client pre year end and suggested speak to Financial Adviser about company making an additional pension contribution to Director to make use of unused pension allowances. Ltd paid additional £78k into Directors pension (including using unused carried forward allowances) and saved corporation tax of £15.6k.

Claiming business mileage as an employee

If you are an employee and you use your OWN car for business and your employer doesn’t reimburse you the HMRC approved mileage rates are you claiming the difference back?

The HMRC approved mileage payments are 45p per mile for the first 10,000 miles per year and then 25p a mile for subsequent miles when using your own car.

So if you did 5,000 business miles and your employer reimbursed you 25p per mile then you can claim the difference of 20p (45p – 25p) back from HMRC to offset against tax you have paid.

The claim can also go back up to 4 tax years and can be done on a P87 form or Self Assessment Tax form (if the claim is more than £2.5k per year).

Case study: a client who is now self employed but was an employee doing c7,000 business miles per year for her employer and her partner who was doing c14,000 miles per year for his employer. Neither had been reimbursed business mileage by the employer. Between them they have received a repayment of more than £6.4k.

Also did you know that if you use a bike for business miles you can claim 20p per mile.

Do not assume HMRC are always correct

Do you check or get your accountant to check HMRC demands for additional tax?

HMRC sometimes get things wrong so do not assume what they are saying is correct as they may be basing calculations on incorrect or incomplete information.

Case study 1: A client that has recently set up a Consultancy business was receiving letters from HMRC saying he had underpaid tax of £500 for when he was an employee. We reviewed the detail behind what was sent and it transpired that rather than owing HMRC £500 he was OWED a repayment of £1,800 from HMRC which he has now received. This was because he’d incorrectly been taxed on reimbursed expenses, continued to be taxed on a P11D benefit that he no longer had and hadn’t taken account of higher rate tax relief on personal pension contributions he had made.

Case study 2: HMRC had helped a client prepare a backlogof tax returns.Client worked in the construction industry so had CIS deducted from his sales invoices. The CIS suffered was correctly included on the tax return. HMRC did the tax calculations BUT excluded the CIS that had already been paid from them. Client getting a refund of £2,204 from HMRC.

Why does profit not equal cash? Working capital explained

Clients sometimes ask “I’ve made a £50k profit so why haven’t I got £50k in the bank?”

We the reason is something called working capital which is the cash tied up in the day to day running of the business.

Example

Scooby Doo and Shaggy both have identical Scooby Snacks businesses (£250k sales and £50k of profit).

Scooby Doo however:

1. Holds a high level of stock
   
2. Pays all his suppliers up front
   
3. Is slow to invoice his customers and never chases them if they don’t pay
   

Shaggy on the other hand:

1. Holds a minimal level of stock as he has an efficient stock system
   
2. Pays his suppliers 30 days from end of month of invoice as per agreed credit terms
   
3. Has all his customers pay him up front
   

Looking at the Balance Sheet of both businesses below:

Scooby Doo has stock of £20k and debtors of £40k so his profit of £50k has turned into an overdraft of £10k as he has negative working capital of £60k.

Shaggy has stock of only £1k (due to his stock system), no debtors (customers pay up front) and creditors of £20k (paid to agreed terms). Therefore his profit of £50k has turned into cash of £69k (profit of £50k plus positive working capital of £19k). A MASSIVE £79K MORE CASH THAN SCOOBY DOO FOR A BUSINESS THAT MAKES THE SAME PROFIT.

Changes to VAT Flat Rate Scheme

The VAT Flat Rate Scheme (FRS) is changing from 1 April 2017 to included a new category of 'limited cost traders' . This is supposedly to tackle "aggressive abuse of the scheme". These businesses will be required to use a FRS% of 16.5% (which equates to 19.8% of the net) which will remove the benefit of being on the scheme for many businesses.

What is the VAT FRS?

The VAT FRS is a simplified VAT scheme whereby the business multiplies gross turnover (including VAT at 20%) by the FRS % for their particular trade sector (e.g. accountant, 14.5%, estate agent 12% etc). (Note there is also a 1% discount off the rate in year 1). However the business is NOT able to claim back input tax on its purchases (EXCEPT capital expenditure costing £2k or more). So a business with a turnover of £100k net and a FRS % of 12% collects £20k VAT from customers and pays £14.4k across to HMRC (£120k x 12%).

The scheme is open to business with a net turnover of up to £150k but you must leave the scheme if your turnover exceeds £230k gross (or £191.67k net).

What is a 'limited cost trader'?

A limited cost trader is a business that has VAT inclusive expenditure on GOODS of

1. less than 2% of their VAT inclusive turnover in the prescribed period (so if prepare quarterly VAT returns rather than annual need to review quarterly)
   
2. greater than 2% of VAT inclusive turnover BUT less than £1,000 per anum

Goods include stationery, promotional goods (tshirts/pens etc), printer cartridges, business cards.

Impact

A number of consultant or service type business in the Flat Rate Scheme will be caught by this as the bulk of their cost base will be services and it won't be practical to spend £1,000 per year on goods such as stationery and printer cartridges.

There will be very little benefit remaining on the FRS if the 16.5% rate applies as most businesses will incur input tax of more than 0.2% of their turnover (e.g. accountancy costs, mobile phone etc.) as at the new rate will be collecting VAT in at 20% and paying across to HMRC at 19.8%.

Therefore businesses in the FRS need to review before 1 April 2017 of whether they are impacted and would benefit from switching to the standard rate scheme or deregister if they are below the VAT threshold (£83,000 turnover in a rolling 12 month period).

Changes to trivial benefits rules

Rules around trivial benefits changed in April 2016 so that employers can now provide trivial benefits without any P11D or employer/employee National Insurance impact (and also get corporation tax relief).

Trivial benefits include flowers, chocolates, meal out etc.

MUST meet 3 conditions for it to count:

1. benefit must cost no more than £50
2. NOT be a reward for services or be contractual
3. NOT be cash or a cash voucher

HMRC have put a limit of £300 of exempt trivial benefits for Directors of close company.

Example of how this might work for Director of owner managed business

Director uses company credit card to buy 6 gift cards each with £50 credit on them. These gift cards can't be exchanged for cash. Then occasionally give yourself the vouchers to use. If there is more than 1 Director this can be done for each Director.

If the Director was a higher rate tax payer then if he/she took £300 extra in salary they would pay £126 in PAYE/NIC and the company would pay £41 in Ers NIC so £167 saving by using gift cards.

Limited company or Partnership?

With the new dividend tax rates from 6 April 2016 a lot of people are asking whether it is still worthwhile running their business as a Limited company rather than an unincorporated sole trader or partnership.

There are benefits from trading as a Limited company such as limited liability and other commercial reasons that need to be considered alongside any potential tax benefit.

However from a tax point of view above a certain profit level (and in most circumstances) the business trading as a Limited company will end up paying less tax.

For example, there are 2 identical husband and wife businesses trading in 2016/17. One is a Limited company and the other is a partnership but both make a pre tax profit of £102,000 before they extract any remuneration. The couple with the partnership pay £5k+ more in tax/NIC than the Limited company.

Limited company

The Limited company husband and wife will take £11k salary each and then dividends of £32k each. There’s no income tax on the salary and a small amount of employers NIC of £353 each (but the Corporation Tax benefit outweighs that). There’s no Employers NIC as this is covered by the Employment allowance.

£5k of dividends are tax free for each of them so they pay tax on the remaining £27k dividends at 7.5% (so £2,025 each)

The company pays Corporation Tax of £16k (£102k profit less £22k salaries x 20%).

The couple end up with a net £81k from the £102k and an effective tax rate of 20.3%.

Partnership

Assuming the same 50/50 split of the £102k profits.

They each pay income tax on £51k (£11k at nil, £32k at 20% and £8k at 40%) so £9,600 each.

They also pay Class 4 NIC each of £3,305 (9% re £43k - £8.060k and 2% re £8k) plus Class 2 NIC each of £145.60 each.

The couple end up with a net £76k from the £102k and an effective tax rate of 25.6%.

The numbers need to be worked through for specific circumstances but here there’s a £5k benefit from operating as a Limited company in this example.

Is it worth having a company car?

If a Limited company provides a car to a Director or employee and it’s used for private use then it is a taxable benefit on the individual.

If having a company car, the CO₂ emissions of the car are very important as they determine how much tax both the individual and the company will pay (the benefit on the individual is determined by the List price x % based on CO₂ emissions).

For example, let’s look at 2 family saloons (a Tesla and Jaguar) that both have a top speed of 155 mph and do 0-60 in 4 seconds – so perfect for the school run!

There’s a huge difference in tax on both the individual and the company pays on these cars.

Individual

The Tesla benefit in kind on the individual is £4.4k so a 40% tax payer would pay £1,800 in tax per year (at current rates).

The Jaguar benefit in kind on the individual is £18k so a 40% tax payer would pay £7,100 in tax.

That’s £16k more in tax the Jaguar driver pays over 3 years.

Company

The company that provides the Tesla gets to write off 100% of the cost of the vehicle in year 1 against corporation tax.

The company that provides the Jag gets to write off ONLY 8% of the cost of the vehicle in year 1 against corporation tax.

Based on c£60,000 car that’s £11k less corporation tax for the Company providing the Tesla.

Depending on the circumstances, it is often better for the owner manager to extract the cash from the company and then get the car out of their own funds. There are also ways to reduce the benefit such as the individual making a contribution re private useage.

Why bother with cloud accounting software?

Basic accounting software has come a long way from the times when the client saved the year end on a disc, passed it to the accountant who did adjustments etc.....

There are lots of relatively inexpensive products out there such as Kashflow and Xero.

Why would you switch to using one of these:

1. Use in any location if you've got an Internet access and password

2. Saves time as

a. Have automatic bank feeds which mean keeping a reconciled bank up to date is quick and easy

b. Can raise and email sales invoices to customers

c. Set up automatic credit control so you can manage your cashflow

3. Any bookkeeping issues can be corrected/checked by accountant throughout the year rather than at year end

5. You are able to regularly monitor key performance indicators of the company such as invoiced sales/P&L/overdue debtors/available cash etc

The KEY to getting the most out of these systems is to

• set the system up properly
• get shown how to use it by your accountant
• Regularly update it

Calling HMRC costs Taxpayers £97m

According to the National Audit Office, £97m was wasted by Taxpayers last year phoning HMRC.

This was broken down as:

• £66m waiting on the phone
• £21m if actually got through to speak to someone
• £10m on the cost of the call

Last autumn the waiting time on the self-assessment number was an average 47 minutes.

So what can you do?

• Try and avoid having to speak to HMRC – if you get everything set up properly and your accountant gets all your compliance done on time (personal tax, corporate tax, PAYE RTI reporting , CIS returns etc) then there should be no need to speak to HMRC
• Write to HMRC rather than call them or get your accountant to write to them - it might be quicker to write to HMRC than wait on the phone (and you also then have a record of that communication)
• If you have to ring them then have a hands free phone or a headset so you can get on with something else whilst you’re on hold

New Dividend Tax

In 2015/16 a ‘husband and wife’ Limited company could extract £78k between them through a combination of salary up to the basic rate and dividends up to the higher rate and PAY NO INCOME TAX (on the cash extracted as dividends, the company would have paid corporation tax at 20%).

When the proposed changes come in 2016/17 this will no longer be the case as extracting the same £78k would result in INCOME TAX PAYABLE OF c£3.5k.

Dividend taxation works as follows from the 2016/17 tax year (from 6th April 2016):

The first £5,000 of dividends are tax free.

Dividend income over £5,000 the dividend income is taxed as follows:

1. If you have any remaining unused personal allowance (£11,000 for 2016-17) then that element is tax free
   
2. Dividends above the basic tax band are charged at 32.5% (this was previously 25% once the dividend tax credit had been take n account of)
   

Additional rates of tax will apply at the upper tax band (£150,000 for 2016-17)

The dividend tax credit has been scrapped, which removes the need to gross up the net dividend received for working out how much tax allowance it has used. This has made things simpler and also means that you can now extract more within the basic rate threshold.

Corporation Tax rates are coming down (19% in 2017 and 17% by 2020) but this only partially mitigates this increase.

This makes it ever more important that all tax allowances are maximised and the shareholding of the company is reviewed (for example, prior to the £5k dividend allowance there would have been no benefit of a higher rate tax payer husband or wife having shares).

Why file 2016-17 self assessment tax return early?

Self assessment Tax Returns needs to be filed by 31^st January following the end of the Tax year (or 31^st October if you want HMRC to calculate the tax payable). So for the Tax year 2015/16 ending on 5^th April 2016, a self assessment tax return needs to be filed by 31^st January 2017.

Here are some reasons people gave HMRC for not filing on time. They all received a £100 fine and their appeals using these excuses were unsuccessful:

• My pet goldfish died (self-employed builder)
• My bad back means I can’t go upstairs. That’s where my tax return is (a working taxi driver)
• I’ve been cruising round the world in my yacht, and only picking up post when I’m on dry land (South East man)
• Our business doesn’t really do anything (Kent financial services firm)
• I’ve been too busy submitting my clients’ tax returns (London accountant)

For those people that like to wait until January 2017 to pull the information together why not get the information together in the next month as:

• You will then know what tax (if any) you need to pay by 31^st January
• You may be able to get your 31^st July 2^nd Payment on account re 2015/16 reduced if your tax is lower than estimated when your 2014/15 Tax return was completed.

Importance of realistic forecasts - Easter Egg Business

Billy Smith needs some help with his business planning and forecasting………….

EASTER EGG SELLER PREDICTS RAPID GROWTH OVER NEXT 4 MONTHS

Billy Smith’s Easter egg business has been overwhelmed since the start of March making up for a generally quiet 2015.

Smith said: “These Easter eggs are big business and can’t see this bubble bursting. To be completely honest we had a tough January and even worse February but overnight for some reason things turned around and right now each day is busier than the last.”

“Extrapolating the figures we have at the moment, by the middle of August we’ll be selling 5,000 Easter Eggs a day.”

Smith’s girlfriend said; “I tried to gently suggest that there might be a dip in sales pretty soon but Billy was too busy arranging to take delivery of a lorry load of Cadburys Button Eggs ready for the summer”.

Forecasts are important as they:

• Allow you to set targets
• Give you something to measure your actual performance against
• Show whether the current course of action delivers the result that is required (in terms of sales, profits and cashflow)

To be useful though they need to be realistic and based on a basic understanding of the business.

The Easter egg business is a seasonal business so you can’t extrapolate the sales in March.

The importance of cash flow in small business: The Scooby Doo cash flow example

The importance of cash flow in the Scooby snacks business.

Scooby and Shaggy have identical market shares and make the same profit.

Shaggy is all over cash flow

• He pays his suppliers 30 days after month of invoice
• He manages his stock so that he never is holding large amounts of stock (whilst ensuring he can meet customer demand)
• His customers are either on standing order or pay up front
• As a result he's got plenty of cash in the bank

Scooby Doo has no interest in cash flow

• He pays his suppliers up front
• He holds a large stock of Scooby snacks so requires a large warehouse
• He invoices his customers at the end of the month and never chases them if they don't pay
• As a result he very quickly runs out of cash and goes out of business

Shaggy swoops in and takes all his customers and Scooby doo is out of business!

Scooby Doo profit extraction (based on 2015/16 tax rates)

Update on what happened to Scooby Doo after his Scooby Snacks Business went bust through lack of cash flow

He set up Scooby Doo T-shirts Ltd

He learnt his lesson on cash flow and had a reasonable 1st year making £80k cash backed profit.

He wanted to extract that from the company so he thought he would pay himself a salary to reduce the profit so he had no corporation tax to pay. So from the £80k profit HMRC got £31k in PAYE and National Insurance leaving him with £49k.

If he’d spoken to Wagner Mason Accountants he could have

• Paid himself a salary of £10,600 (no income tax and minimal National Insurance)
• Paid his wife Scooby Deee a £10,600 salary (as she was heavily involved in the business)
• Paid HMRC corporation tax and NIC of £13k
• Made his wife a 50% shareholder in the business and taken the rest as dividends between them

Net result he and his wife have £67k rather than £49k WHICH IS A SAVING OF £18K IN TAX AND NATIONAL INSURANCE

Not all accountants have to be boring......

There’s a theme that all accountants are DULL DULL DULL.

Well we’re not (or maybe just a little!). Here's our top 3 jokes about accountants:

Why did the accountant cross the road?

To bore the people on the other side.

What's an extroverted accountant? One who looks at your shoes while he's talking to you instead of his own

A lady goes to see her doctor. After examining her, he says, "I'm terribly sorry to tell you this, but you only have six months to live." "Oh doctor, what should I do", she asks. The doctor says, "I advise you to marry an accountant.""Will that make me live longer?" she asks, hopefully. "No " says the doctor. "But it will seem longer."