Ask yourself if you’re in this current position: your business is growing and its reach is about to rise to international levels. But there’s a problem. Your reach is entering the sphere of Chinese businesses but you don’t speak Chinese. While language and cultural barriers do exist, there are plenty of business advisory services in China. These could come in the form of corporate audits or accountancy services for China and are equipped to handle the language that you, unfortunately, don’t speak. Not to mention keeping in check the international tax and accountancy services for Chinese businesses.
The plethora of positions found in business all fit in the cog somewhere. However, a fraction certainly rise to the top: account and auditors. And these positions permeate the sphere even in business advisory services in China. The United States Bureau of Labor Statistics has tallied the number of accountants and auditors working at around 1,397,700.
The Importance of Auditing
Let’s say your business sold 100 books, each at $10. Your bookkeeping should reflect that all that money is accounted for at $1000. Now let’s say you sold the same number of books for the same price, but the bookkeeping only reflects $900. Now there’s a problem because $100 is unaccounted for. An auditor’s job, generally, is to test the accuracy of statements made by a business. A misstatement like that would throw a red flag.
Enough red flags get thrown and now your business could be looking down the barrel of fraud. Any tax returns your business files on a timescale of three years, can be audited by the IRS and if you’re unlucky enough to have them on your back, they could, can and will, collect back taxes your business owned for as many as 10 years. Just look at the year 2017 when the IRS collected taxes to the tune of $3.4 trillion, divvied out $436 in tax refunds and oversaw the audits of 1.1 million tax returns.
Accounting and Its Colorful History
The importance of bookkeeping has seen its influence even as far back as ancient Mesopotamia, where ancient accountants used sheep and produce for religious temples as their method for keeping track of taxes.
Accounting’s interesting history continues when an Italian mathematician, Luca Pacioli, published his book, the first of its kind, on double-entry bookkeeping in 1494. And because of his book, International Accountants Day is celebrated on its original release date of November 10th.
What this means for any business is no matter what culture you find your business operating out of, it’s important to hire an individual capable of bridging the language gap. If your business works in China, it’s crucial you find the right Chinese accounting firms as well as any other business advisory services in China.
