Here to help

Under the temporary editorship of Dave Hartnett one thing at least has been clarified (in case there was any doubt) by the article by Brian Redford of HMRC (Helping hand) about small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs).

The ‘help and support’ offered by HMRC has nothing to do with reducing the red tape or the compliance costs SMEs must shoulder. It is simply HMRC’s way of trying to ‘help and support’ SMEs to comply with an ever-demanding set of statutory obligations as accurately as possible in order to reduce HMRC’s staff time and effort.

The increased demands made by HMRC for the computerisation of SME’s statutory returns the imposition of tagging under iXBRL rather than using existing familiar electronic systems the dismissing of the professional bodies’ views as to proposed changes or the timing of their introduction are...