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So, another tax return season ends. Congratulations to everyone who, despite the obstacles put in their way by clients, managed to get all their returns submitted before the deadline.
It wasn’t meant to be like this: tax returns should by now have become a distant memory. I’ve been looking back at the March 2015 HMRC document Making tax easier – the end of the tax return. The key paragraph was this: ‘By 2020 more than 50 million individuals and small businesses will have a secure personalised digital account – removing the need for millions to complete a tax return and simplifying the tax system for millions more.’ I remember discussions at the time at my old firm (and many others will have had similar experiences) about our personal tax business and wondering what many of our staff would be doing in a few years if there were no tax returns. Would there have to be significant downsizing? It was very unsettling until it became clear that nothing was going to happen for a long time – though we probably didn’t expect that it would be quite as long as it has turned out to be.
It would be wrong to ignore the progress that has been made. I found this year that submitting my own return was a pretty painless process. The online forms are fairly straightforward and pre-population is certainly helping. But for many people, particularly the self-employed, the thought of filling in a tax return is still a nightmare (probably more so than the actual experience). This was summed up for me in a headline in The Guardian last week ‘how can I possibly fill in my own tax return: I know nothing about money’.
Perhaps we should start taking bets about the year in which tax returns are finally phased out. 2030 anybody?
If you do one thing...
See HMRC’s revised guidance on VAT in insolvency (tinyurl.com/hmrcvatn70056).
