Chaotic Commotion at Christmas

23 December - The office Christmas party. A little respite from the hard work we've all put in during December. We all know what January has in store for us, so the office party is always filled with mixed emotions - a time for letting our hair down, but always with a cautious eye on what's to come. Enjoy the fun whilst it lasts, guys - January is just around the corner.

22 December - The final countdown to ... the end of the month before the Tax Return filing deadline. The tax team are as serene as swans, gliding gracefully through their work (while paddling furiously below the water line!). I just hope they manage to keep their heads above water. So far so good, and everyone is fit and well. There is this flu bug going around though, so fingers crossed that we all manage to avoid it. The last thing we need now is a mass reduction in manpower for January.

21 December - The usual challenge is to get the remaining work in next month. And to get the signed Tax Returns back. Thankfully our excellent personal tax software has been kept up to date by the tax team so we know exactly where we are by running the tracker reports. Next month I'll be getting almost daily update reports telling me, for example, how many returns are still not started and how many are out for signature but not returned. The aim, as in previous years, is to have no late returns except those where the clients have decided themselves to be late (possibly by resisting all attempts to be contacted by us, I should add). I don't see why we shouldn't achieve that again this year.

Impeccable timing as always!

Why oh why does the taxman do it? December and January are notoriously the busiest time of the year for accountants and tax advisers and yet, despite constantly shoving the "do it online" message down our throats, problems ALWAYS, ALWAYS arise with their online filing systems at Christmas and the New Year.

This year has been no exception. Actually, yes it has been an exception - it has been WORSE THAN EVER!! New clients for whom we have submitted 'authorisation codes' don't show up as our clients on their online system. Tax Returns submitted online for established clients don't show up as having been submitted, so we've no way of knowing if they've been received by HMRC. Then you call their helpline and a teenager (probably spotty, but that's the beauty of telephones - you don't have to look at the oik at the other end of the 'phone!) utters some nonsense about not being a tax specialist, but instead he's an IT geek who really wants to go home and play on his XBox, so you go away feeling you're nowhere closer to resolving the problem.

My tax assistant has brought Issue 33 of Working Together (a publication issued by HMRC's so-called Public Relations department) to my attention. Since June 1996 we have received copies of our clients' Self Assessment statements every six months. In January we usually devote quite a bit of time to checking our agents copies and telling clients if they're correct or not. But not this year "because of tighter data security requirements across all government departments", whatever that means. In fact, tax agents won't be getting any more SA statements until after October 2009.

So, advising clients on how much tax to pay at the end of January is going to be fraught this year as I anticipate that, as usual, quite a number will receive incorrect statements. How many will have tax liabilities unexpectedly coded out through their PAYE coding? Or were expecting to have tax coded out but will then receive an unexpected bill? The snag is, we may not know unless they tell us and if they don't tell us then we have absolutely no way of knowing what's going on. By October it will be too late to avoid the late-payment interest and surcharges for client's for whom HMRC have got it wrong. It will be like the blind leading the blind! Arghhhh.....

Must go - got to call the taxman and have a moan. I wouldn't want to be him.

How complicated can it be?

It annoys me when the taxman introduces new rules, designed to offer tax breaks, but doesn't publicise them enough for the man on the street to know about them. More annoying is when the new rules are so complicated that even accountants find them difficult to understand, let alone Joe Bloggs. A typical recent example is the wholesale changes made to the Capital Allowances system for businesses.

Huge numbers of businesses are losing out on tax breaks when they buy and sell land and property, and when they spend money doing up property they already own. Many, or perhaps even most, owners of commercial premises are missing opportunities to save tax, and the amounts at stake can be staggering.

The reason these tax breaks are being missed is that many accountants (even some of the big firms) misunderstand the rules. A survey of around 6,000 accountants, carried out at the start of 2006, showed that many are struggling to understand the rules and are failing to make adequate claims. But is that their fault? In recent years the tax system has become so complicated that you really need to be a specialist in order to keep track. Accountants in general practice have enough on their plate keeping upto date with the myriad of changing rules in auditing (don't yawn), let alone other areas such as tax and VAT.

Capital allowance claims can produce tax savings running into tens of thousands of pounds. A rule of thumb is that the tax savings can typically be up to ten per cent of the cost of the premises. Buy a site for £500,000, for example, and you could be saving £30,000 or £40,000 or £50,000, or even more. But relief is only given if a proper claim is made and the rules for claiming can be so complicated that people are put off at the first hurdle!

Changes introduced from April 2008 have increased the percentage of expenditure qualifying for tax relief. It may sound too good to be true, but in reality this is a completely legitimate tax break and claims are being made every day using the old, defunct rules. Businesses (or, more importantly, their accountants), need to bring themselves upto speed with the new rules before the strict time-limits in which to amend their claims have passed, because the opportunity of increased allowances will then be lost forever. Call me an old synic, but perhaps that's why the taxman doesn't publicise the rules as much as he should. It wouldn't surprise me.