September/December 2015 Question #4. Part A

Hello…

Is this correct?
The advertisement says “Have you had enough of your accountant charging you too much for poor quality services?” This makes it seem as though all of the other firms providing accountancy services except Monet & Co. are providing poor quality services and doesn’t have the knowledge, skills and experience to perform quality work. In essence, this statement is discrediting the services offered by other accountancy firms by claiming superiority for their own services.
The advertisement says “Monet & Co. provides the most comprehensive range of finance and accountancy services in the country”. This statement is unclear as to exactly what are the services being offered by Monet & Co. and can be viewed as being misleading to potential new clients because they may think that Monet & Co. does any job in relation to finance and accountancy.
The statement in the advertisement that Monet’s tax team are “just waiting to save you money” suggest that the tax team may be involved in tax evasion which is illegal to ensure that the client always pays less tax to the government.
The advertisement also guaranteed to be cheaper than the potential client’s existing service provider. This is misleading to the potential client as there are no facts upon which Monet & Co. can use to support this claim in that they are cheaper than their competitors.
The offering of business advice to new audit clients creates a self-review and self-interest threat because Monet & Co. would have to audit areas on the financial statements where their advice was sought. Furthermore, offering free business advice may result in some management decisions being made by Monet & Co.
Monet & Co. describes themselves as Chartered Certified Accountants. They should not describe themselves as such because it’s not in accordance with the ACCA rules on practice descriptions. The rules says that in order for a firm’s practice description to be Chartered Certified Accountants, at least half of the partners must be ACCA members (only 10 out of the 30 partners are ACCA members) and that these partners must control at least 51% of the voting rights under the partnership agreement.