Looking round art galleries & delving into tax law
Having the courage to trust in your feelings can get you a long way. Willianne is living proof of this. This quality not only comes in handy when she is visiting art galleries, but also in her career as a tax advisor! Interested to discover how she puts this quality to use at Visser & Visser? Read on to find out!
Willianne works as a Tax Return Advisor at Visser & Visser. Do you need to file your income tax return? Then let Willianne take care of it! “I help businesspeople file their tax returns. Based on the documents I receive, I prepare the tax return, so that, once it has been approved by the client, it can be sent to the tax authorities.”
From student to tax advisor
Willianne came to Visser & Visser when she was a student. “I studied tax law and, during my studies, I started out here as a working student. You always start in the tax returns team”, Willianne explains. “It may not always seem like the most important area, but nothing could be further from the truth.”
The combination of studying and applying what you have learned in practice works well. “The great thing is that at university you mainly learn a lot of theory. This is very much focused on tax advice, but that is actually the next step, step two. You also need to know how to incorporate your tax advice into tax returns. So it’s a good place to start”, declares Willianne. “When you then move into the role of tax advisor, it’s easier to exchange thoughts with your colleagues on the tax returns team. It makes the process enjoyable, and efficient too!”
The art of tax law
“Many people say that tax law is boring.” Willianne takes a different view, however. “People think the laws are just there in black and white, and it’s simply a matter of applying them. It’s by no means always that straightforward, though. What if the situation deviates just slightly from the rule? What do you do then? The legislation is not always completely clear and sometimes it’s possible to interpret something in different ways. Particularly when it comes to people or companies whose situation is not typical, we try to find a creative and appropriate solution within the legal framework.”
“It is absolutely not true that tax law is boring. In fact, there is a lot of creativity involved!”
“The art of my profession is to help the client as much as possible”, asserts Willianne with certainty. “The figures are part of the story, of course, but often the context around the figures is more important. These details emerge when you carefully analyze the client’s information. A number can tell you many things, after all. I notice exactly the same thing in my hobby. Losing yourself in an art gallery is something wonderful. Quietly looking at a painting that grabs you and then filling in the details of what exactly it is you are seeing. It feels like an escape from the hustle and bustle of daily life. A painting can mean so many things. I like the fact you can work out for yourself what it means to you and what kind of feelings you get from it. Nothing is right or wrong. A painting may have a different meaning for a child, for example, than it does for an adult. Tax advisors also look at figures differently from economists.”
Guided by feelings
Willianne is guided a lot by her feelings when she visits an art gallery. It is exactly the same in her work. “I’m someone who always relies on my feelings. From the first moment I walked through these doors, I felt comfortable. What is it exactly that I like so much about Visser & Visser? The atmosphere, my colleagues and the friendliness. There’s also an open-door culture. You are welcome to step into anyone’s office, whether it’s a fellow advisor or a partner. I don’t want to disappear into the masses as just a number in a huge office. It’s not like that at all here. That’s what I like so much about working at Visser & Visser.”
