[ableal]

> you will still want to hand off your records to an accountant to sort out taxes and generally get counsel.

Ditto. For instance, if I had talked to my accountant soon enough, I could have saved half of my company registration costs - he knew about a special, not too well advertised, local program, which my in-house lawyer did not know of. Also, tax legislation looks like a minefield to me - a competent[1] accountant is a mine-sweeper that may save your bacon.

[1] Horror story from friends: years ago they formed a company, didn't do much business, dissolved (which in itself may be hard, especially if someone moved away). Later had to keep paying fines because of paperwork improperly filed by their accountant.

P.S. The "grumpy editor" at lwn.net occasionally looks at FOSS accounting software, and readers chime in; e.g. at http://lwn.net/Articles/314577/