Starting your own accountancy practice is a bit like having your first baby. There never seems to be a good time for it. But if it’s what you’re really hankering after, eventually you just have to bite the bullet and get on with it.

Having said that, while there is no such thing as a good time, some times are undoubtedly better than others. You probably wouldn’t want to start your own practice the week before your first baby is due, for example. And on the face of it, many accountants would not consider 2013 to be ideal timing for them to strike out on their own.

The economies of the developed world are still in the doldrums, the eurozone crisis is rumbling on, households and small businesses are feeling the squeeze and the UK’s national debt keeps growing to the extent that it is predicted to hit 85.6% of our GDP in 2016/17. Ouch.

Nevertheless, research by information provider Bloomsbury Professional has found that entrepreneurial accountants are undeterred by the gloom. Last year the number of new accountancy firm start-ups outstripped closures for the first time since 2008. Overall, there was a net gain of 850 accountancy firms in 2012, following a net loss of 360 firms in the preceding two years.

Martin Casimir, managing director at Bloomsbury Professional, attributed the trend to the market stabilising as the economy recovers from recession. “New firms are joining the market, clients are now willing to increase their spend on finance and accountancy advice, while the firms that survived the recession are financially tougher and less likely to fail,” he said.

But he also pointed out that the recession had changed the landscape of the accountancy profession, resulting in a number of “micro firms” springing up. Essentially, many accountants have been spurred into leaving larger firms and starting out on their own as a result of redundancies, restricted promotion opportunities and low wage growth during the recession. And as Casimir explained, the accountancy market has low barriers to entry: “Potential sole practitioners only need a computer, a spare room and a good knowledge of start-up rules and regulations. Most accountants are more than familiar with these.”

The truth is that a host of successful businesses including software giant Microsoft and courier FedEx were launched during recessions and there’s no reason why your accountancy practice can’t join them. Recessions can be periods of tremendous innovation and enterprises that are founded in challenging times have the advantage of knowing how to survive when the going gets tough in a later business cycle. There are also practical considerations – office space can be cheaper, suppliers more amenable and your competitors may be weakened. And just remember that most people feel the same way about self-employment as they do about parenthood – it may be stressful at times but they don’t regret making that choice.

So is now a good time for you to strike out on your own and start your own practice? There’s only one way to find out.

Some interesting research caught my eye recently. It came from the Grant Thornton International network, which had carried out a survey of more than 3,400 businesses in 44 economies on the subject of corporation tax. Specifically, it asked businesses whether they would consider relocating to another country in order to cut their corporation tax bill. The overwhelming response was ‘no’ with two-thirds of businesses unwilling to budge.

I like surveys such as these – they are what I call “research that supports the blindingly obvious”. But sometimes the blindingly obvious needs to be said. Of course, two-thirds of businesses wouldn’t move country to cut their corporation tax bill; in fact, I’m surprised the figure was as low as that. FTSE 100 giants such as WPP might have the resources to up sticks and headquarter themselves in another part of the world if they find that their current tax regime doesn’t agree with them, but it’s not a realistic option for most businesses.

The thing about businesses is that that they tend to have owners who are not necessarily institutional shareholders and might quite like where they live. Even if they don’t like where they live, that doesn’t mean they can fly away to the Bahamas at the drop of a hat and set up shop there. For starters, they need to have the legal right to live and work in that country. Then there are the considerable issues of finding suitably skilled people to work for them, leaving an existing network of contacts behind and managing relationships with customers and suppliers from a different location – and that’s even before you get on to hurdles such as language, regulation, logistics, foreign exchange rates and time zones.

According to Grant Thornton’s research, business leaders in New Zealand are most resistant to relocation. This is an interesting case in point. Although New Zealanders could theoretically head to Australia (same language, similar culture, better weather, not that far away in the scheme of things), there would be no point in their doing so at present since the corporation tax rate is higher over there. Even if it were lower, New Zealand is not a ‘big business’ country – 97% of its businesses are SMEs and relocation tends not to be an attractive option for them. SMEs are usually heavily reliant on their relationships with local customers and the networks that they have built up over time. Also, their products and services tend to be influenced by, and tailored to, the environment that surrounds them. Besides, when you live in a nice country that is a straightforward place to do business in, why would you want the hassle of starting again across the ditch?

Interestingly, the same research found that businesses in Russia, India, Taiwan, Greece, Botswana and Norway would be most likely to move for a lower corporate tax rate. But both you and I would hazard that there are other reasons why business leaders from some of those countries would like to move and it probably doesn’t come down to tax.

Ultimately, tax is just one factor that companies take into consideration when deciding where to headquarter their business – there are many other (arguably more important) considerations besides. Any business thinking of relocating to achieve a reduction in corporation tax needs to weigh up the risks very carefully. Tax is such a political football. Who wants to move only to find that the tax break that attracted you in the first place turned out to be very short-term?

One of my favourite sayings about women is this ancient Chinese proverb: ‘Women hold up half the sky’. But despite making up around 50% of the planet’s population, women are undoubtedly disadvantaged to a greater or lesser degree in probably every country in the world. Women do 66% of the world’s work, according to the United Nations, and produce 50% of its food. But they earn 10% of global income and own just 1% of property in the world. Indeed, they comprise 70% of the world’s poor. In many countries, they are appallingly repressed, deprived of basic human rights and treated as the chattels of their husbands. Every minute of every day, a woman dies from childbirth or pregnancy-related complications – that’s over 500,000 a year. In Malawi, the maternal mortality rate is 1 in 36. Many of these dead mothers will be little older than children themselves.

In the developed world, death in childbirth may be a rare phenomenon, but child-bearing seems to kill off women’s careers. While girls do better at school, go on to study at university and enter the professions and other top careers in large numbers, they seem to fall off the ladder in equally large numbers once they hit their thirties and stop having families. Of course, some women choose to put their family above their career and that is their own, perfectly valid, choice. But other women struggle to balance the two and end up having to make terrible sacrifices because employers are often unwilling to be even a little flexible. And in this climate, where people are afraid of losing their jobs, employers hold the upper hand.

To add to the problems associated with the ‘family factor’, women are often their own worst enemies when it comes to driving their career success. A major challenge is that women seem to persist in believing that all you need to succeed is to be good at your job. Recognition and reward will surely follow, right? Wrong, wrong and wrong. Although being good at your job is an important building block, of course, you need more than that to climb to the top. There are plenty of examples of talented people who have fallen by the wayside and people with comparatively limited capabilities who have held some of the biggest roles around. George W Bush was twice elected as president of the United States. That alone should tell you something about the direct correlation between aptitude and power. And I am sure that everyone reading this can think of at least one manager they have known over the years who was promoted beyond their abilities.

So what else do you need to succeed in your career? Firstly, you need to be a good networker – as Woody Allen once put it: “80% of success is showing up”. Secondly, you need to put yourself forward. Forget about being modest – go out there and tell everyone how great you are. This is something men seem to do a lot more naturally than women (even when it isn’t justified). Thirdly, you need to master the art of positive thinking and looking on the bright side – women tend to worry a lot more than men. This is a bad habit (one that I have) and one that we need to get on top of. We also need to stop apologising and stop feeling guilty. I know, I know – it’s easier said than done!

Unfortunately, one of the big issues with diversity is that we have to battle against thousands of years of evolution and the assumptions that have been created by that evolutionary process. Women might have had the vote in the UK since 1918, but they have been dying in childbirth since the beginning of time. Men are used to surviving the wilds of the forest and wrestling with wild boars; women were long tied to the caves and their children and were frankly thankful that they were still alive to see another day. ‘Unconscious bias’ is known to be one of the enemies of diversity – this is bias influenced by factors such as social environment, upbringing and culture. In other words, we are mostly likely to hire people like ourselves. At a deep level, I also think that evolution influences unconscious bias and evolution is a very difficult barrier to overcome.

Hence we reach the subject of quotas. Hardly anyone (either male or female) seems to support the idea of female quotas for the boards of companies. The reason for this is that we want to be recognised on merit. Or at least, women apparently do – whether a man would be stupid enough to think about turning down recognition he didn’t deserve, I don’t know. Unfortunately, we can’t ask Sir Jimmy Savile because he is dead. Seeking recognition on merit alone is very sweet and very noble of us women, but sadly it isn’t going to get us very far. When you’re tackling the status quo, change generally has to be forced. How many chief executives reform their companies by making a few tweaks here and there and hoping their employees will get the subtle message and pull their fingers out? Organisational change in companies is generally brutal with plenty of casualties along the way. At present, women constitute 17.5% of board directors among the UK’s FTSE 100 companies, according to accountancy body ACCA. That is a pitifully low figure, especially when many of these will be non-executive rather than executive roles.

So what happened to all those brilliant girls who flew through school and university? Their careers died in childbirth, that’s what. Serious discrimination against women does exist in British business and anyone who believes it doesn’t is kidding themselves. And the higher you go, the worse it can be. That’s why I believe that the only way that we will see real change in the make-up of business at a senior level is if companies are forced to bring talented women through their ranks. This will also mean that they have to be more accommodating when female employees have very young children. In the short term, it is undoubtedly unpleasant to enforce diversity objectives. But as we have learned from the banking crisis, sometimes we need to think about the longer term. And at the moment, there is a massive pool of female talent going to waste.

Data released by the Bank of England last month revealed a contraction of some £4bn in lending to UK businesses in the three months up to November 2012. According to the bank, businesses were continuing to pay down debt as quickly as possible.

While this is positive in one way since over-indebtedness lies at the root of the world’s current economic problems, it is worrying in another. If businesses aren’t borrowing, then they’re probably not investing. And if they’re not investing, they’re probably not growing and creating jobs.

These findings are backed up by recent research from PwC, which revealed that only 22% of UK CEOs were “very confident” about their company’s growth prospects over the next 12 months while an alarming 83% cited cost cutting as their focus for the year ahead.

As we’re all painfully aware, the government is running out of options to kick-start the economy (and, possibly, time given that the next election is scheduled for May 2015). Despite departmental budgets supposedly being slashed, the government is set to borrow more money in 2012 than it did in 2011, not less.

With bigger companies seemingly reluctant to fork out on generating growth, the government is relying on the public at large to find our ‘inner entrepreneurs’. Hence the raft of incentives that exists to stimulate start-ups including venture capital trusts, R&D credits and the enterprise investment scheme. Indeed, many more of us have actually had to become more entrepreneurial in recent times – through circumstance as well as by choice. Over the past four years, the number of self-employed people has risen by around 10% as a result of people striking out on their own after losing their jobs.

As accountants know, both because they are often self-employed themselves and they work with the self-employed, being your own boss is by no means the easy option. Sure, the rewards are there. But so are the hours, the paperwork, the lack of pension provision and the uncertainty. And although a recession is actually as good a time as any to start a business – fortunes were still made during the Great Depression – our human instinct for self-preservation means that in troubled times, we tend to shy away from taking unnecessary risks.

Given the government’s apparent fondness for entrepreneurs, it is somewhat surprising that it hasn’t worked out that the present tax system is not particularly motivational. A top rate of 50%, or even 45%, when you have national insurance contributions as well, does not send the message that this is a country that supports people who want to get ahead. Neither does a higher rate that kicks in at relatively modest earnings of £34,371.

So far, the government has channelled its tax incentive strategy firmly in the direction of bigger businesses. It has brought the corporation tax rate down from 28% to 24% and it will reach 21% by 2014. But these moves do not appear to have done anything to stimulate growth. On the contrary, to return to the Bank of England’s findings, it appears that companies are using their profits to repay their debts instead of make investments. Meanwhile, some businesses, particularly in the extractive industries, are building up substantial cash piles.

The government surely never intended that the outcome of its generous tax break would be that companies would hoard their wealth. So perhaps it’s time that it revisited its strategy and thought about taxing big business more and individuals less? Who knows, that might be enough to coax a few reluctant entrepreneurs out of hiding.

Accountants aren’t the only professionals who don’t always grasp the importance of marketing.  I work in the communication industry and I don’t always devote the time to marketing that I should. Sometimes it can be hard to justify it, especially when fee-paying work is clamouring for your attention. But I try to remember the advice I read in a business guide when I first started out: 10 minutes of time devoted to marketing activities is never wasted.

With that in mind, have you taken a good look at your website recently? Go on, be honest. And if you have, put up your hand if it looks virtually the same as it did in 2008, even though we’re now in January 2013. Don’t worry if you think it’s a little stale, you’re not the only one. Recent research by Decibel Technology found that more than a third of British people believe that their closest competitor’s company website is actually better than their own. Even worse, one in five don’t actually think their own company website represents their brand.

What does having an out-of-date website mean for your firm? According to Decibel, nearly half of people would consider not even doing business with an organisation that had an out-of-date or hard-to-navigate website and a third of people would be put off working for one with a poor web presence. So the fact is, your firm’s scruffy website could be costing you both money and talent.

January is a notoriously busy month for accountants, but if you can take 10 minutes out from preparing self-assessment tax returns, I recommend that you take a good look at your website. And if it’s in need of a revamp, make that your marketing project for 2013.

I’m quite intrigued by the current Supreme Court battle between insurer Prudential and HM Revenue & Customs, particularly the issue of whether accountants should have the benefit of legal professional privilege when advising on tax law.

I imagine that the very thought of accountants having legal professional privilege regarding their clients’ tax matters must have HMRC’s inspectors spitting into their milky morning coffee. There are already enough cases of accountants dreaming up complicated tax avoidance schemes – just imagine what would go on if they had the protection of legal professional privilege.

Good on the accountancy institutes for giving evidence in the case and having a go at securing legal professional privilege for their members, but I can’t see it happening somehow.