Today our interview series goes into a new round and in a slightly different direction. We’ll talk to you Axel Bahr, He is a self-employed tax consultant and acts as an expert for digitalization in his industry on behalf of DATEV.
To imagine you as a tax advisor is actually not enough. Would you like to say a few words about your career?
Yes, I am 52 years old, father of 5 children and now also a grandfather. I started training as a tax clerk in 1982 and then passed the tax advisor exam in 1996. I am currently running my law firm alone and in the near future together with a second tax advisor. The law firm has existed for 21 years and now has 15 employees. We are one Certified law firm according to the quality seal of the German Tax Consultants Association.
In addition, I trained for… certified executor, for the Business mediator and systemic coach. In addition, I have been a… Lecturer for DATEV on the road, as an expert in the area of digitalization in payroll accounting.
What is the biggest challenge when it comes to digitalization in payroll?
There are traditionally a lot of them here Media breaks – Information is transmitted via telephone, fax, paper and scans, and all of this needs to be digitized:
This ideally starts with an email “Employee digitally on a portal made available.
The employer, i.e. our client, also receives one digital copy and can record these via invoice management such as GetMyInvoices; For this purpose, a corresponding data record is passed on for the transfer of wage payments and only needs to be activated with a TAN.
That’s already pretty advanced! So will there soon be a paperless tax office?
Well, those paperless Tax practice lies in a future that is not tangible for me today, i.e. beyond 5-8 years. But the** paper poor** Law firm, this is definitely a first step in this direction:
- First The receipts are increasingly being digitized; scanning the receipts is only a transitional phase.
- Secondly It’s about getting used to digital filing and management systems, but progress in the profession is still very slow.
- The third step is the digital workplace, so that everything is done on the screen and, for example, is no longer printed to the printer, but to OneNote or similar.
This is not only the case with the tax offices, but also with the state, banks and insurance companies Rethinking required. In Austria, for example, all public institutions only accept digital invoices - in Germany, for example, according to applicable legal standards, an employment contract is only valid if it is signed on paper!
Which documents are allowed to be available digitally in Germany?
As I said, the paper version is mandatory for employment contracts and also for notarial contracts. In the accounting sector, on the other hand, in principle everything can be digital, it just has to be** stored in an audit-proof manner**.
An invoice that is written in Word and stored as a PDF is not audit-proof - and according to the tax authorities, this is a formal accounting deficiency.
What would be an audit-proof format?
There is an audit-proof storage option digital management systems (DMS). If a file is stored there and later processed, there is always a corresponding note - and this meets the requirements of the tax authorities, i.e. the principles of proper accounting, which apply from January 1, 2017.
What inspired you to get into accounting and taxes?
I was 17 years old when I did my training. Due to a nice long vacation after school in Italy, I had neglected to register for the next secondary school - well, and there was a tax advisor in the neighborhood who was still looking for an apprentice.
But I already enjoyed the job and the combination of it during my apprenticeship structured work – Accounting, receipts, taxes… – and at the same time that too human contact. As a tax advisor you gain a very high position of trust among people, right after doctors, and that is a very big challenge to support people in their decisions.
On the other hand, it is exciting to realize - when you talk to tax offices, for example - that what is written in the law is not so black and white after all, there are facts that can be interpreted and designed differently… Yes, and that does it just fun!
What would you do if you weren’t in your current position?
I always wanted to Purser on a ship become. Every cruise ship or container ship that is on the move receives money from the shipping company and this money has to be managed on the ship - paying out wages, making purchases…
Yes, that’s what I always wanted to be and now I’ve become a tax advisor and can’t imagine any other career today.
At most, in the future, when I retire from the office, I will become a hotelier: such a small hotel, a little cooking for my guests, a little playing the piano…
What would you do if you had more time (through automation, for example)?
If more things were automated, I would use the time to look after my clients even more intensively and actively. This means less work and passive advice, but rather finding out where your advice needs lie through good questions and listening.
You also work with and for DATEV and therefore know what relief the use of technology can bring. Which digitalization option would you definitely not want to do without today?
On the DMS, i.e. digital storage or archiving, I definitely don’t want to miss out on that Electronic processing of bank account statement data and the OCR recognition when scanning receipts, so that the information is recognized.
Which areas in your law firm would you like to digitize?
Currently I have just started two projects. The first concerns the Digitization of my clients. I no longer want to make my digitization speed dependent on the speed of implementation of my clients. So if the client still works with a pendulum folder - i.e. someone comes to me once a month with a receipt folder, we book it and then they pick it up again - then I digitize it and process all receipts digitally, regardless of whether the client want it or not.
The second project concerns ours DMS, our digital management system, which we will still use for archiving, and our employees’ desks - they will be completely digital. You get an iPad and all the yellow pieces of paper you normally have on your desk are displayed via OneNote. This is a Microsoft note management product with an open, customizable structure.
What are the most common accounting mistakes you see from your clients?
Many clients have what is called Shadow accounting, that is, they provide the tax advisor with a folder of invoices every four weeks and then do not work with them, but instead keep separate parallel lists of, for example, which invoices have already been paid.
The second mistake Many clients see accounting only as a necessary evil for the tax office, and not as an opportunity, as a platform to recognize tendencies and developments and to derive changes from them.
What would you like from your clients?
Digital submission of receipts, complete access to all data and shorter booking cycles! To do this, the client would first have to write to all suppliers and say: Please do not send me paper invoices, but send them by email to [email protected] . Then they can be uploaded and less and less scanning has to be done.
The second step would then be different, shorter rhythms in working with the tax advisor - so that any abnormalities can be addressed much more quickly. But we are still light years away from that for many small medium-sized companies - on the one hand they say ’never change a running system’, but that is also due to the lack of pressure from outside.
What tips do you have for freelancers and company founders?
Don’t just talk to your tax advisor about day-to-day business, billing or advance tax returns, they’ll do that well anyway.
Instead, find a colleague to support you upstream processes to optimize: So
- how do I establish one digital management system?
- How do I do this with incoming and outgoing invoices, what programs do I need?
- Can we have one? Process consulting do to avoid media disruptions?
So talk less about taxes and more about how you can combine digitalization and automation; Don’t just submit the receipts from the past year, but rather take a quick look at how you can identify trends from current data and develop strategies - both business and tax! – can be derived!
Yes, then I would like to thank you for the interview and would like to conclude by giving you the opportunity to do some advertising: Why should entrepreneurs hire you?
Because I always have a good idea and not only as a tax advisor, but also as a trained coach think.
Because I Complicated things made easy to understand I can explain and help my clients jump on the digitalization bandwagon if they want to.
Yes, and we have fair prices - we always focus on the process and optimize it together with our clients instead of simply increasing the fee.
