Self Assessment: How was it for you?

With Self Assessment season over for another year, Robert Lovell looks back at practitioners' experiences during the last month.

In contrast to the build-up and hysteria surrounding the call centre industrial action and eleventh hour announcement, for many the two-day penalty moratorium was more of a damp squib than saving grace. The Steeden v Carver loophole, which in previous years let you avoid a penalty if a return was filed a return on 1 February, was closed down this year so it was thoughtful of HMRC to revive the tradition for a final farewell.

However the most common reaction among AccountingWEB members appeared to be, “Oh God, why did they have to extend the pain?” And many chose not to tell their clients about the change.

Others mulled over the varying motives behind HMRC moving the goalposts at the last minute, with suggestions ranging from it being done “with PR in mind” to a more creditable explanation that HMRC had decided to show a more caring side during this stressful period.

In Rebecca Bennyworth's view, extending the period before penalties would be raised automatically allowed it to avoid issuing deluge of late payment penalties that would have resulted in mass appeals that would at to the department's administrative burden.

With the deadline out of the way, HMRC reported that overall more returns were filed this year than last - a record 9.45m SA tax returns were filed on time, and a record 7.65m (80.9% of the total) were filed online. Official HMRC figures show that compared to last year, when 600,000 returns were filed on 31 January, just 400,000 returns on the official deadline day in 2012. Another 87,000 returns turned up on 1 February, followed by 120,000 on 2 February, so the extra two days proved their worth to less organised taxpayers and their advisers.

With a larger number of returns submitted overall, HMRC claimed that proportionally more people actually got their returns filed in advance of the 31 January deadline this year.

On the service front HMRC reported a smooth final few days. There were a couple of isloated posts complaining that Self Assessment Online was not responding, but with few other members reporting similar experiences these episodes did not appear to indicate any major breakdowns.  HMRC said the online portal held up well and there were no problems to report.

In a joint survey with TaxCalc, AccountingWEB has been monitoring how software developers and HMRC itself have been dealing with support queries. There was a surge of responses in the final 10 days, with nearly 50 new reports added to the 100 previous responses collected up to 20 January. The HMRC Agents line and main SA helpline experienced the biggest surge of calls, and the increasing deadline pressure was evident in a lower overall proportion going away fully satisfied (see table below).

The tax department ended up just missing the 50% threshold for the quality of its support lines, but it wasn't all bad news.  Andrew1946 reported the following experience with the Agent's Dedicated helpline service satisfaction: “To my amazement I received the ‘call back’ telephone call on Sunday afternoon from HMRC, the adviser/technician responding to my query in an efficient and jovial manner. I feel I must therefore, give credit where credit is due and somewhat swallow my bad thoughts, and on this occasion sing the praises of HMRC.”

In line with the increase in online filing this year, AccountingWEB also saw a surge in activity with more than 316,000 individuals visiting the site in January - 28% more than during the same period last year. The busy Self Assessment period has come to be a consistent feature in AccountingWEB's annual traffic pattern, which shoots up after the Christmas lull and continues rising after 31 January to peak at  Budget time.

Now that you’ve made it through the last couple of weeks, how was it all and what were your war stories? There’s still a chance to win an iPad by registering your experiences in the TaxCalc SA support survey .