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Pop quiz, hotshot: to what degree does Working with Tax Agents threaten taxpayer privacy?
Okay, it’s not a question that stirs the adrenaline to the same degree as the posers from the recently deceased Dennis Hopper to Keanu Reeves in the movie Speed (‘Pop quiz, hotshot: there’s a bomb on a bus... What do you do?’). It’s provocative nevertheless – and, more importantly, it’s appropriate to Taxation.co.uk’s readers and their experience.
That’s why we asked it a few weeks ago. Our site regularly features little polls: multiple-choice questions that investigate visitors’ opinions on relevant topics.
Some, like the one cited above, are deadly serious. Others aren’t quite so stern. (At the time of writing, we’re quizzing readers about their favourite film featuring a tax adviser/accountant.)
All are broad in scope and usually short in length, and for a reason: long, overly technical queries are likely to off-putting – or a bit dull, at the very least.
The point of such surveys, with their oh-so clickable radio buttons, isn’t to accurately gauge the views of tax professionals. Far from it!
The results represent only the small sample of people who answer, not tax pros as a whole, and those individuals might not all be from the targeted audience given the polls are open to everyone.
(Political science professor Jon A. Krosnick once told BusinessWeek that drawing firm conclusions from online quizzes can be ‘like making an automobile out of soft plastic’.)
Their main purpose is to encourage visitors to engage with the site. A mini survey is, as the American web editor Robert Niles put it, ‘a gateway drug of online interactivity’. It draws people in.
A brief question followed by a small selection of responses is tough to resist if you’re strong of opinion (as most tax experts seem to be), and answering is quicker than commenting on an article.
Once you’ve had a sweet taste of expressing yourself to our site and its users, we hope you’ll want more and so progress to leaving remarks beneath stories (you’ll need a subscription to do so) and contributing to our Working Together e-group. We look forward to hearing from you.
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