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.
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.
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