The end, at last

A hectic end to the 2009 tax return filing season, made worse by it falling on a Friday. There hasn't been a livestock market in our town since the early 1970s, but farmers still come in to town on Fridays to go to the bank, so a bit of shopping – and to call in on their accountant and expect half an hour's idle chat. Most week's I'm happy to oblige, but this week I had to move them on pretty sharply!   As always, several clients who have been unobtainable for months suddenly appear and behave as if there's nothing wrong with leaving everything until the last day. We have had one sole trader's 30/4/08 accounts out in draft for over a year. Despite numerous reminders he wouldn't come in and review, doesn't return phone calls – and now we also have his 30/4/09 accounts ready too. So he turns up at 12 o'clock and expects us to have everything sorted so he can pay his tax on time.   The record this year goes to one of my bookeepers for whom we do a few tax returns for her clients. She eventually got her last set of accounts in to me at 5pm! Luckily, I knew I could get them on to a tax return, approved and filed within half an hour otherwise I would have turned off my email and left it until Monday.   So overall a satisfactory result, all 340 returns remaining at the beginning of the month have been filed, plus a dozen or so new ones that weren't on the system, making over 600 returns filed this year.  

Two returns will be late at the clients' request, because they weren't happy with their accounts and want more time to get them right (i.e. see if they can get the profits down). One return to file next week, a new case with no tax liability so there won't be a penalty. And one return (and the 2008 return too) not yet filed because the accounts for a new client only came in on Tuesday, I haven't been able to do the money laundering checks yet or meet the client to check that the returns are complete to my satisfaction.