I distinctly remember when I was in middle school and a teacher asked me about my Dad’s profession. I reflexively answered, “He’s a Chartered Accountant (CA)!” without having any idea what a CA actually did. I continued to operate in ignorance regarding the duties of a CA for a few more years, and it’s only in the past decade that I’m discovering the intricacies of how a trusted, knowledgeable CA can help you. My dad has a career spanning close to 40 years, so this isn’t meant as a marketing piece for him, but rather as a word of advice to the many adults I continue to meet who are productive, contributing members of the modern workplace but who still have no idea about how a CA can help them.

If you’re a professional, having a CA go through and submit your tax return forms might help. They’re well versed in the latest tax code, and might be able to minimize your income tax payments (i.e. maximize your returns) such that your first consultation will probably be free when you net it out. They can also recommend savvy strategies for legal tax minimization (like incorporating a legal entity, or making a tax deductible contribution, etc).

And more importantly, if you’re an entrepreneur, you need a trusted CA to help you navigate the complexities of your company structure and tax minimization as a whole. There are often times where I’ve seen partners start up new enterprises under the same legal corporation over the years, and the eventual shitstorm of figuring out how to divvy up assets and liabilities when they want to split ways decades later. It’s so much easier to have different legal entities for each enterprise, for each set of partners – it’s easier than ever to set it up these days (thanks to governments adopting modern software development stacks, genuinely) and it will avoid a bucket load of pain in the future.

This isn’t the whole value proposition, but I’ll leave the rest as an exercise for you. Go to your existing CA or search for an adept new one. Feel free to talk to a few of them, considering the rising pass rates for the CA exams in India in the past few years, now it’s harder than ever to find a quality professional in the sea of options. Though this isn’t financial advice, I’m quite sure this exercise will be a net positive investment.