Legal Research

Should Accountants Have ?Privilege??

By John Gregory

The Court of Appeal of England and Wales will be considering whether accountants should benefit from something like solicitor-client privilege, at least when they are giving advice on matters like taxes. The story is here, noting that the Law Society of England and Wales has been given leave to intervene. The Law Society opposes any extension of privilege.

The trial court held that there was no privilege so the tax authorities could require disclosure of discussions between the accountants and the client.

Should privilege be extended? I am not aware that any such claim has been made in Canada, but I could be wrong. What do you think?

P.S. I accept that my title might be more accurately, though less dramatically, ’should the clients of accountants benefit from privilege?’, since the privilege ‘belongs’ to the client, not to the professional.

Full post as published by Slaw.ca on May 31, 2010 (boomark / email).