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Practitioner's Diary: What are we going to do about 64-8s?
The West Country general practitioners offers some insights into dealing with agent authorisation forms - if the HMRC online system will let him.
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28 August - I am amazed to report that the tax team are well on top of the 2008 tax returns already. They have comfortably met their monthly targets so far, and expect to get 60% completed by 30 September. This may not sound much, but it's ahuge improvement on previous years. We have rarely filed many returns at all before the end of August as the time has been taken up with P35s, P11Ds, holidays and exams.
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27 August - Glad to read on TaxZone that the online agent system is up and running again. Like many firms, for us the main role of 64-8s these days is to open up access to online tax return filing and taxpayer data. So having sweated blood to get the things logged with HMRC it's a bit galling to find that their computer system won't let us in! At least they're open for business again today.
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26 August - Returning from a long weekend - don't know why I bothered, the weather isn't going to improve until the kids go back to school! Of course I am now paying by scrolling through 200+ largely junk emails.
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22 August - If you can raise any life from the online agent authorisation system, here’s a useful tip I spotted while searching the site for some 64-8 advice: don’t just submit one 64-8 to cover everything.
It may look like a multi-purpose authority form but, as we know, HMR&C is still far from joined up yet. I suspect you would get the best result if you get new clients to sign a bunch of the things and send in separate forms for SA, CT, PAYE and VAT, and send all but SA to the relevant office and not to Longbenton. Let’s see if the scattergun approach works better. I suppose you could fill in all the sections on each form, send them to the different offices and see if they then start passing the processed forms between each other.
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20 August - Typical. I decide to focus my attention on 64-8s and the news starts filtering through that the system is playing up. Maybe that's why HMRC is still a bit reticent about practitioners using it.
Update - Now I learn, thanks to fellow AccountingWEB members that most of HMRC's web infrastructure is out of action for the day.
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19 August - Perhaps the tax credits office should take a leaf out of the VAT office’s book. On submission of a VAT 1 on behalf of a client they almost invariably send us a blank 64-8. Or used to. Now we just get a letter pointing out that we don’t have a 64-8 in place, and recommending that we go to the HMRC website and print one out and get it signed.
Print it out? The point is, I thought there was a drive to do this sort of stuff online. Why don’t they promote filing 64-8s online then? Probably because many practitioners find it a real bind. We usually need a 64-8 at the start of a client relationship, so there will be several meetings and signing the form is at the top of the agenda.
Contrast this with the online authorisation where we have to wait for the client to receive the authorisation code at home, the client has to realise – despite having been told – that they need to give it to us promptly, and we have to set up yet another tracking system to chase missing codes. I realise many firms use it, but personally it looks like more trouble than it’s worth.
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18 August - Have the 64-8 rules gone mad? The consensus seems to be that they have. Some of my colleagues are currently sorting out the dregs of the 2008 tax credits renewals – not that we deal with these per se, but we do aim to get SA Returns done early so we can advise tax credits claimants what to put on their renewal forms. But there are always a couple of cases where we relent and agree to phone Preston to try to sort out some intractable problem.
Now that’s another one of those fantasy HMR&C offices. Has anyone ever spoken to anyone who seemed remotely competent and interested at Preston? More to the point, has anyone ever received a reply to a letter sent to Preston? Paul Koumi thinks he might as well post 64-8 forms down the back of his wardrobe and see if they arrive in the mystical land of Longbenton any quicker. I think I might do the same with tax credits correspondence in the light of the number of queries we have outstanding on tax credits that appear to be going nowhere. This is especially true of clients with excessive alleged overpayments, where it seems no-one is prepared to explain to us why these have arisen. These two issues may be related, of course – the TC office thinks we don’t have a 64-8 in place and simply ignores us. Would be nice to be told.
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14 August - A good comment piece by Francesca Lagerberg in Taxation this week, calling for sfaeguards to balance HMR&C's powers. Most frightening is the litany of situations where the taxpayer has no rights or safeguards - did you know, for example, that the taxpayer has no right of appeal against a decision to recover a tax credit overpayment? No, neither did I. Frightening, isn't it - the legal situation I mean, not my ignorance (I don't 'do' tax credits, I would add in my defence!).
I recommend that all our readers nip across to the HMR&C website and submit their contribution on the consultation into the new Taxpayers' Charter - you only have until 11 September to do so.
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12 August - Taxpayers' rights? Nichola has summed up the position very well over on Tax Zone, in fact I'm going to get on over the HMRC and throw in my two pennies worth on the Taxpayers' Charter debate! Levels of confidentiality and data protection in government departments are laughable anyway, we really need to stand up as taxpayers and advisers and tell government that it's just not acceptable.
And I like the idea of having a statutory system of taxpayer compensation to match the new tax penalty regime - why not, what's good for the goose, etc. We have a better system of automatic repayment supplements, so let's extend it to a table of automatic compensation and redress for HMRC errors and incompetence.
We could start with a formal system of commercial compensation for delayed and unreasonably witheld VAT registrations. I know I'm not alone in having clients whose businesses have been seriously held up by delays in getting registrations through.
Talking of VAT registration, the latest one on my desk is driving me mad. Company client has owned and restored freehold commercial property for several years - now applied to opt to tax rents so it can recover VAT on major refurbishment - we have replied to two enquiry letters following the original application - today we receive a third enquiry letter asking for proof that the company either owns property or can provide evidence that it is buying it. Duh!!
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8 August - The more I think about it, the more I am convinced this debate about protecting 'accountant' is such a waste of time. A client asked me this morning, "what is a chartered accountant?" - apparently unaware of what the name signified. Why had he chosen us? Because of a recommendation probably, he certainly hadn't gone out looking for a certain qualification. That's how it has always been, it's why incompetent and unscrupulous unqualified (and qualified) accountants usually make a good living and will continue to do so.
It was similar with BS5750 and ISO 9001. We had it for many years, like a number of firms, but I don't think we ever won or lost business because of it. Clients either like you and what you do for them , or they don't. What you call yourself doesn't really interest or impress most clients.
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6 August - I see that old chestnut, the protection of the name "accountant", is back in the press at the moment. Some people would like to see the name made the exclusive property of the professional bodies, or some sort of statutory register of "accountants", in order to 'protect' the public from unqualified accountants.
Frankly I don't see the point. We just need to accountancy bodies to maintain a marketing programme to remind people that there are highly qualified members of the institutes and associations - and there are by default the less reliable unqualified accountants. Surely it's a branding exercise rather than a need for some statutory restriction on the use of what is a pretty generic word.
Even that is not going to 'protect' the public from our less capable but nonetheless qualified colleagues. We continue to pick up a steady stream of new clients from local sole practitioners who, while they may be technically very good, are totally unable to manage their own practices - ignoring phone calls and letters, failing to meet filing deadlines and reasonable expectation of their clients, etc - and then expecting to be paid handsomely.
Maybe we should protect the good name of our profession by first weeding out the incompetent QUALIFIED accountants in our communities before we start having a go at the bookkeepers and UNqualifieds.
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5 August - I know I've said this before, but the growth in the number of company clients seems only to offer us more opportunities to miss filing deadlines. July is one of the worst months - the filing deadline for 30 September accounts at Companies House. But the deadline isn't 31 July - oh no, it's 30 July of course, same day in the month as the accounting date! Whose daft idea was that?
So 30 September 2007 accounts have to be at Companies House by 30 July 2008, but Corporation Tax is due on 1 July (not 30 June), while VAT for the period to 30 September 2007 is due by 31 October (and not 1 November)!!
I am pleased to see that Companies House will be giving a full calendar month to file accounts under the new, shorter filing deadlines, but you would have thought that legislation could be drafted so that deadlines were calculated on a consistent basis.
And, yes, we did file a couple of 30/9/07 accounts a day late!
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4 August - It had to happen. Just to show willing, I unplugged my notebook PC and put it in my drawer - as instructed by the IT dept - to keep it out of sight over the weekend. So of course when I plugged it back in it wouldn't connect to the network. The good news is that we have Dell Pro Support - the bad news is that it was gone 11am before i was doing anything useful today! Happily the excellent Dell engineer was able to talk me through getting my network adapter working again, but it takes for ever to repeatedly restart a networked PC, so it was slow going. Of course, our own IT people were on holiday or otherwise engaged so it was down to me to fix.
At least my replacement printer arrived before they all went off. The old HP Laserjet just packed up and wouldn't co-operate with my computer. "There's something rattling inside", the IT manager said as he took it away. How do you shake a big desktop laser printer like that and get anything to rattle anyway?
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Last month our West Country general practitioner shared his thoughts on the future of tax advice for small practices, and fended off the MD's wife again - see his July 2008 diary.
Number of comments: 1
AccountingWEB.co.uk 29-Aug-2008
Categories: Practice News, Practitioner's Diary
Times read: 6874
I see you have trouble with junk emails. I use Spamfighter and now would not be without it - never even check what is in there anymore; I just empty it. I found Spamfighter on Aweb but that was early 2007.
