The Tax Adviser as a Crisis Manager – Episode 2 with Martin Klumpp

Together with four co-authors, hsp Managing Director Paul Liese has written the book *The Tax Adviser as Crisis Manager: Supporting Businesses with a View to the Future*. The book has been published by Schäffer-Poeschel Verlag and is available in bookshops. The five contributors share their own perspectives and insights. They repeatedly emphasise that the book is, in fact, five books in one. Experienced practitioners from the tax and management consultancy sectors present advisory concepts relating to liquidity planning, management accounting and financial reporting, which help to strengthen businesses in times of crisis.

In a mini-podcast series, law firm strategist and communications expert Daniel Terwersche speaks with his co-authors. The second guest to be interviewed is tax adviser and chartered accountant Martin Klumpp. As managing director and partner, Klumpp heads Trewitax Deutschland GmbH in Singen (Hohentwiel) on Lake Constance, a firm with around 40 staff.

Businesses and customers

Klumpp makes it clear that the word ‘law firm’ is not used in connection with Trewitax. Instead, he refers to it as a company. A made-up word is also deliberately used as the company name, as its flagship. The company serves an exciting range of clients, from the self-employed individual to large corporations. At the start of the crisis, he realised that he would only know where his business was heading once he knew where his clients were heading. That said, Klumpp does not like to talk about ‘clients’. Like Trewitax, he refers to them as ‘customers’. For Klumpp, as for his co-managing directors, one thing is clear: clients should be able to expect the same quality of advice, regardless of who provides it.

Martin Klumpp on investing in in-house processes, the differing responses of small and large companies to the crisis, managing the client portfolio and optimistic tax advisers:

Set of the sequence:

»Our guiding principle: working at the company rather than within it.«

Introduction | Episode I | Episode II | To Episode III | Episode IV