@wrangler CA's job is to account for all your income from different sources in a financial year, and give you a breakdown on tax-liability. Once you've paid whatever taxes you owe, CA can help you file the returns.
For a single individual, that might not be too complex.
CAs that work as accountants for businesses, have much more work to do, because income / revenue of a business entity is much more complex than yours.
There are also tax consultants, that can help you with tax related advice - how to structure your income and tax-exemptions in a way to minimize your taxes in a financial year. Or, carry forward losses etc.
But, Financial Planning is far more vast than that.
Tax Planning is you trying to prevent your losses. Financial Planning is you trying to grow and hold on to your income.
You could say Tax Planning is a subset of a financial plan.
If you're looking for financial planner, check out SEBI registered fee-only financial planners, who don't take commissions on products they recommend.
Check out this list.
Buyer beware - there are lot of entities that'd like to call themselves as "advisor". Even your bank guy.
But they most likely want to increase their commission, even if that means recommending products like ULIPs (higher lock-in, little to no returns), Regular plans of MFs (higher commissions), FDs (high TDS, low returns) etc.
A financial planner's job is to look at all your assets, take into account your financial desires / goals - and give you a plan, that takes you there with lowest risk possible. His job is not to maximize returns, at the cost of higher risk.
A fee-only financial planner would help you understand what all you're doing wrong or right, how you should structure your finances, with a wholistic view of everything in your portfolio.
