Australia is having to adjust to a new workplace reality, with many white-collar workers within the mining industry being forced to consider their future and seek out new business opportunities. 

TaxAssist Accountants, a burgeoning small business tax and accountancy franchise which launched in Australia in 2015, has seen two franchisees join its network due to mining industry redundancy.

Avendra Narayan joined TaxAssist as its first franchisee in Sydney in 2016 having previously worked at a large mining company.

David Cornes joined as the fourth franchisee in the Gold Coast most recently, with a diploma in mining engineering and a background in operational management.

Narayan said, “My last employer had a de-merger and the mine site I was based at fell into a new company.”

“As a result of this restructure and the downturn in the mining industry, a lot of us were made redundant.

“I took the redundancy payment and invested it into TaxAssist Accountants.”

He says he’d considered various options and found that a franchise worked for him.

“The franchise system runs the business and the people in the franchise run the system,” continued Narayan.

“The model utilises uniformity and I really like this concept.”

But he certainly did his homework.

“I spent six months researching various accounting franchises,” he said.

“TaxAssist Accountants are new to Australia and the biggest attractions were the marketing concepts and the shop front style of operating the business.

“I have now been growing my TaxAssist Accountants practice for just over a year and business is going very well.

“In fact, I’m so pleased with the way the business has grown, I’m now looking to acquire a second territory and a second shop.”

Cornes added, “I was attracted to TaxAssist Accountants because of the growing brand and unique proposition in the market place and I was really impressed with the level of technical and marketing support on offer to TaxAssist franchisees.”

Terry Murphy, the master franchisee of TaxAssist Accountants in Queensland, New South Wales, Victoria and Australian Capital Territory said, “The mining industry’s loss is TaxAssist’s gain.

“TaxAssist offers a fantastic opportunity for ambitious accountants to run their own accountancy practice with full backup and support, catering for a market that very much requires our services.

“We are seeing many new enquiries coming in from ex-mining industry accountants keen to secure their own future by working for themselves,” he said.

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