A Day in the Life of Bryan Allendorf, Head of Private Client Tax Services of BGA Tax Specialists

My desk, to be honest, is a labyrinth of files and papers, each as important as the next.  Private client work must surely be one of the most paper laden practice areas with versions of draft documents, lengthy explanatory letters, detailed financial analysis, draft accounts, etc.  I know the state of play on each of my files, just as I know the histories of my clients and their aspirations and fears.

I understand the barriers that most clients feel to legal jargon and formalities surrounding corporate tax planning or returns, tax and financial planning for professionals and executives, personal tax returns and preparing returns for deceased individuals and estate administration.  In meeting and talking with clients, I do my best to overcome these obstacles: if a client fails to understand, then I have failed.

Today’s diary is the usual mixture of seeing clients, researching, drafting and dealing with other advisors.  I head the Tax Strategies area, which includes the people side of tax law.  I deal with those concerned they or their business is paying too much tax or not receiving all of the tax credits and rebates they should, wanting to sell their business or buy a new one, wanting to save tax during their lifetime and upon death or make provision for family – all types of human emotion and all aspects of the human condition. 

A big benefit of working in tax is the variety of projects one can expect to work on.  Depending on the are of tax one focuses on, one could expect to work on an income tax minimization strategy one minute, a GST project the next, a major corporate reorganization and the details of a purchase or sale of a business the next.

Little compares to the complexity of my clients.  I love sitting and listening to all the exciting deals and transactions swirling around me.

IT has revolutionised the tax-planning world.  Computers and the Internet have completely changed the researching drafting tax opinions and strategies. The nature of my work is a constant flow of phone calls, emails and less today, faxes.

In client meetings I take instructions, give advice, help my clients to understand the limitations and the possibilities available to them. I look at immediate and future concerns.  I spend the rest of my time thinking up ways to expand beyond the limitations to make the law fit the plans of the individual.

I spend time explaining the same types of corporate tax planning, operations and benefits of trusts, Will planning, etc. again and again but to each set of clients it is completely new and fresh.  In tax there is no “one size fits all” for tax planning; situations are as individual as the people that make them.  I deal with secrets and lies; histories of sibling rivalry, settling of old scores; wealth passing to the humble and helpful; each as important as the next. 

I try and see at least one set of clients a day as I really enjoy the contact that this brings.  In private client tax planning the emphasis is on “private”.  In order to offer the best advice I have to know all my clients’ affairs.

My daily work is about juggling the expectations of my clients within the confines of the law and the reality of the human condition.

I often have a square peg problem: I want to give my children everything, but without paying tax and maintaining control during my lifetime.  I place it into a round whole solution:  I set up trusts whereby the parents are trustees, the children beneficiaries.  I regularly have clients who comment that they hadn’t expected to have so much fun planning for their business or their retirement, or that the tax planning was so easy.  I actually have as much fun as my clients and work very hard to make the complex simple.

It really is an amazing profession!

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