January: an accountant's survival guide. By Rob Lewis

Posted by AccountingWEB PM | on Fri, 11/01/2008 - 10:57 6407 3 comments

With more suicides and divorces than any other month, and a sudden fall-off in mince pie consumption, January is officially the worst time of the year. But accountants have to cope with other people’s tax returns too. So here’s a collection of the very best advice – both old and new – about how to make sure you’re still working in general practice come February.

Continued...

Right on Mark

carnmores | Fri, 18/01/2008 - 10:02 | Permalink

what pisses me off is if there is no tax to pay why cant the computers automatically cancel the fine

31st December

carnmores | Mon, 14/01/2008 - 10:37 | Permalink

it might be an idea to move it to that date!

it may make people get their papers in early as they cant expect us to work over xmas

;-)

Move the deadline?

Anonymous | Sun, 13/01/2008 - 20:05 | Permalink

I can't think that many people would agree with campaigning to move the deadline to November. All that would do would be to cram 10 months work into 8. You'd also have four dead months, instead of two, although there's always company work to do and preparation for P11ds and the new tax year. That fits nicely into February and March, but I don't think that I'd want four months to do it.

OK, there wouldn't be any problems with having to work Christmas, but I doubt that I'm not alone in not wanting to take the usual massive break from (last year) 21 December to 2 January, or even 7 January. I've never felt the need to work over the actual holiday period, but it's quite nice to go into a quiet office on 27 December!

As a matter of interest, the Revenue always announce that £x million of fines have been incurred after 31 Jan. I wonder how many of those are subsequenly extinguished because there's no tax due, or because of duplicate returns. Quite a few, if my experience is anything to go by.