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The ICPA’s Tony Margaritelli comments on the rising tide of compliance for practitioners.

I am really pleased to have secured a super 25% discount against the cost of iCaaS GDPR management system. It means that, for £7.50 per month, a practice can be fully GDPR compliant by following the system and keeping up to date.

I know that in the time since its inception GDPR has not been headline news but the false war is, I feel, now over and the regulators will be looking at ensuring compliance.

I then got to thinking GDPR, Money Laundering and Auto Enrolment are all good initiatives: all worthy and valuable in their own way but each of them costly in terms of hours spent ensuring compliance and each carrying the threat of significant financial penalties – and in fact potentially even criminal punishment – for the unwary.

Each not only being regulated by different regulators but each also giving our Institutes something extra to check us against.

It’s admin I know, and every business has to cope with admin and that’s a fact of life but when I think of the depth of knowledge required to be genuinely and fully compliant and the cost in terms of time necessary to maintain our knowledge to the required level, I begin to get a tad dizzy. Throw in as well as the cost of all manner of systems to aid us in just these 3 areas, all of which have to be learned and then applied to the circumstances of our individual practices, and I begin to be fearful for the future of the GP Accountant because as well as all this we have to keep up to date with the Tax code and Accounting Rules.

As I contemplate this I’m reminded of my old boss who, at varying times in any given monthly period, usually when completing his timesheet (yes I go back that far) would exclaim “This admin will kill me”

Now I know how he felt.