Private client: where does the tax software fit?
Private client teams increasingly provide tax services: personal returns for high net worth clients, trust returns, estate administration and the Trust Registration Service. The returns are prepared in specialist tax software. The client relationship, the time, the bills and the client money sit in the legal system. Deciding how the two fit together is easy to leave until it hurts.
Two systems, one client
- The legal system: the client and matter, conflict and AML checks, time, fixed fees and bills, client money, documents and correspondence, and key dates.
- The tax software: personal and trust returns, tax calculations, beneficiary tax certificates and filing with HMRC.
Without a plan, clients, trusts, trustees and beneficiaries are keyed into both, details drift apart, and nobody is sure which address or tax reference is current.
The small decisions
- Which system owns the client record? Usually the legal system, with details sent to the tax software, not typed again.
- Trusts as structures: can the legal system record a trust with its trustees, beneficiaries and settlor, and link them to the right people for AML and conflicts?
- Deadlines: online returns by 31 January, payments on account, Trust Registration Service updates and, for clients now within Making Tax Digital for Income Tax, quarterly updates. Are they key dates in the legal system, with owners and escalation?
- Collecting information: do clients upload statements and certificates through a secure portal, or by email?
- Billing: is recurring tax work set up as an annual or quarterly fixed fee, with time still recorded to show what it costs?
- Paying tax: if the firm pays tax from client account on a client's behalf, is the payment controlled and recorded like any other?
What to ask, and what to see
- Show a trust with its trustees and beneficiaries, and how their details reach the tax software.
- Show the tax deadlines for a client portfolio as key dates, with owners.
- Show recurring tax work set up, billed and its profitability reported.
Technical notes: small decisions, big consequences
Start with the overview: The details that decide the project
Accounts and finance
- Core accounting is still the gold standard
- One-way or two-way sync? Connecting your legal system to Xero
- Units or minutes? How time is recorded
- Your matter and nominal structure
- Making Tax Digital: the firm and its clients
Workflow, data and documents
- Workflow: deep, basic or none?
- Client onboarding and matter inception: portal, e-signature and ID checks working as one
- Custom data: what you rely on, and how you move it
- Precedents, merge codes and macros: your document bank in a new system
Your types of work
- Legal aid: your records, not just the Legal Aid Agency’s
- Litigation: Precedent H starts with time recording
- Family: Form E and financial disclosure
- Private client: where does the tax software fit? (you are here)
Security and access
- Roles or individuals? How user permissions are set up
- Why manage security twice? Linking application security to Microsoft Entra
- How granular is the security inside the system?
- Who can see what in reporting?
- Shared platform, your data: separation, restore and erasure
- When the supplier is the target: where your data lives, who can reach it, and your real risk
Microsoft 365
- How does it connect to Outlook?
- What did you just give it permission to do?
- What happens behind the scenes? Background integrations with Microsoft 365
- OneDrive is not a document management system
- Microsoft 365 is not a backup
Data and decisions
Official sources
Check the detail for yourself at the source. Rules and guidance change, so always use the current version.
- Trusts and taxes: How trusts are taxed, and trust returns.
- Trust Registration Service: check if you need to register: Which trusts must be registered, and when.
- Making Tax Digital for Income Tax: when you need to use it: Thresholds and start dates.
- HM Revenue and Customs: All HMRC guidance and services.
Where does your firm stand?
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