Naive tax questions - there are no easy answers

Yesterday I mentioned a post on AccountingWeb in which my recent article was being discussed. The editor of Taxation magazine, Mike Truman, has contributed to the thread a couple of times, most recently in the context of, what I would call, naive tax questions. That is, straightforward questions clients might ask to which there are no straightforward answers.

I've copied Mike's list here and added 3 of my own to take it upto ten. I wonder if anyone can suggest any more:

1. How do I become non-resident?
2. More than 20% of the income of my company comes from letting an investment property, but the assets, time and expenses are all more than 80% trading. Will it qualify for entrepreneurs' relief?
3. As a sole trader, can I claim the cost of my lunches back when I am out on business?
4. I run a restaurant, and recently took a bottle of wine home to drink for my birthday. At what price do I have to account for it - the price on our wine list or the price in an off-licence?
5. And what about the bottle of wine I took home last birthday - do I have to account for that at anything more than cost?
6. My partner and I own a company in equal shares, but I have other income, I recently waived part of my dividend so that she could receive a larger one. Am I still taxable on it?
7. Rather than do A which would have given me a tax liability, I did B C and D, which had the same combined effect but with no tax liability, on a literal reading of the tax legislation. Am I liable to tax anyway?
8. How much tax will I save if I incorporate my business?
9. How much of my car costs, mobile phone costs, home related expenses etc can I get off my tax?
10. I'm not domiciled in the UK, is it worth me paying the £30k bung?
    

Going back to the point I made yesterday, the danger comes when someone attempts to answer such questions without first seeking clarification of the surrounding facts and without adding the necessary caveats. If a tax specialist who understands such issues would consider this necessary, I'm sure no generalist adviser would take a more relaxed view. Would they?

In any event, let's see how far we can extend this list.

How confident are you?

One of the most powerful factors that affects whether an accountant will refer tax queries to tax adviser members of the Tax Advice Network is the level of confidence that they have. Are they

* Rightly confident that they know enough and that there is little chance of being wrong?
* Over confident and reluctant to seek a second opinion?
* Lacking in confidence and worried that clients will think less of them if they admit what they don''t know? (They''ll certainly be unhappy if the accountant gets it wrong, that''s for sure. Most clients recognise that their accountant is like their GP and that sometimes there is a need to go to a specialist);

What about you?