This week's opinion: 20 June 2019

Before I started working on Taxation I asked former editor Mike Truman for advice. He made some helpful suggestions but said that the one thing that I must not do was interfere with Readers’ Forum. I was happy to follow his guidance. Readers’ Forum in various incarnations has been at the heart of the magazine since the first issue and has always been one of our most popular features. When in practice I always wanted to see whether anybody had a similar problem to the one I was dealing with and, more importantly, whether somebody had the answer. I can’t say I have read every question and answer but I have dipped extensively in the archive.

What is striking is the way that some themes keep cropping up despite the huge changes in taxation since the magazine was first published. Time and again there are questions about how to persuade the Revenue of the rightness of your argument; how to make sense of complex and often contradictory rules; and, the questions I most enjoy, how to dig clients out of the holes which they have dug for themselves. Somebody writing a history of the tax profession over the past 100 years would find the forum a rich source of information.

We are lucky to have a large group of correspondents who regularly provide answers. So if you haven’t sent us a question before, why not spend a few minutes submitting one? It’s free and you will receive some good answers. Just think what the combined charge-out rate would be for the services of all of our readers. By using the forum you get all that brain power for nothing.

If you do one thing…

If you have personal tax clients, read HMRC’s latest guidance on the payment on account problems for 2018-19 on page 6 of Agent Update 72 (tinyurl.com/au72june). Some clients may end up in a favourable position.