Practitioner's Diary

 I eventually got through to a real tax inspector the other day to chase up one of my lingering s419 repayments and he helpfully took the time to explain the system, so I though I'd share this wisdom with you:

1. Always refer to a claim for a CT or s419 repayment in your covering letter - it gives you another chance at being spotted.

Am I the only one on the receiving end of some odd communications these days?

I am talking about exchanges of emails that completely fail to communicate anything. I was beginning to think perhaps my powers of communication were leaving me. Then I had a thought.

Over the years there have been some consistent themes since my earliest years as a trainee - no-one has ever wanted to do P11Ds or annual returns - or to be the office VAT expert!

And I still hate doing P11Ds:

1. Because clients don't value them, and hence don't value our time doing them on their behalf - i.e you can't charge an adequate fee for all the hassle they are. One of my clients uses a big payroll bureau who charge just £7 per P11D! I'm not interested in competing with that!

Yes, how about them indeed. Like, how do you go about getting one?

Like getting CT refunds from earlier years following a loss carry back, getting s419 back when a loan is repaid seems to be equally difficult.

The so-called "quiet season" in February and March has always been the time we general practitioners catch up with CPD. Time to clock up some training hours before the new tax year starts.

I am particularly pleased to see the growth in online delivery this year, it really seems to be coming together. When you're stuck in the wilds of the West Country - or any rural backwater outside the M25 - you can spend a disproportionate amount of time just getting to and from training events. A half day course in London? Forget it.

 ... and I'm feeling a little depressed. Quite a major contributing factor has been the deluge of PAYE coding notices we have received for clients over recent weeks. Nearly every one has come in its own envelope, with THAT flyer.

Every time I see that photo it really gets to me. There's just something about the poor lady's sad, bemused face that really gets my day off to a bad start.

Maybe it's just me, I thought, so we had a quick opinion poll around the office: "what do you think this woman is feeling?"

"Sad"

"Depressed"

Doing farm accounts requires a particular, even peculiar, set of skills and procedures. Like examining the Livestock Movements records.

It's like auditing the goods in and out records when auditing finished goods stock in a warehouse, or rather the stock records of a motor trader because every cow has its own passport and identifying number.

Why does HMRC make such a meal of Corporation Tax refunds?

Once again I have had to phone Merthyr several times before anyone will action a CT refund resulting from a loss carry back claim. As usual we included a full computation of the revised prior year, calculated the repayment due and specified it in the covering letter when we submitted the later year's accounts and CT600. And once again they did exactly nothing for the best part of three months until we decided to start phoning them on a weekly basis.

Good job we were already thinking about this. Just had the third phone call from a client (not the same one) asking if we can help with online VAT submissions!

Now we need a system.

Unfortunately our Sage SAPA accounts prep software doesn't have ay interrogation facility, I'd dearly like to get a list of VAT-registered clients with turnover over £100K. Looks like we'll have to cobble it together from memory and a bit of inspired guesswork, plus a bit of tedious file reading. Just the sort of thing for the tax team to while away the time in February.

Only a couple of months before we have compulsory VAT filing online for many clients. How many are ready?

A quick straw poll while I was chasing tax returns suggests that many clients have done nothing about it, and quite a few are going to have problems. I visited an elderly sole trader who is well over the turnover threshold for online VAT, keeps an immaculate set of manual records and has no idea what all this online stuff is about. I think his 1960s transistor radio is about the most high-tech device in his house!