After being ambushed by software developers and the IT Faculty at Softworld on Thursday 3 March, Customs officials played down their plans to set up a financial software kitemark scheme with the British Standards Institute.
An 11am presentation from Customs head of audit R&D ended with a Q&A session at which officials got direct feedback from the software industry on its kitemark plans.
The day before the talk, business software trade body BASDA issued a press release rejecting the proposal and urging the institute to consider the ICAEW IT Faculty's scheme.
"The institute said they are willing to extend their scheme to cover the tax issues raised by Customs and some 31 companies have been through its scheme. It is independent of the software industry and government and has served users very well for more than 15 years," Keeling told AccountingWEB at Softworld.
The BSI attempted a similar project in the early 1990s, Keeling said, which led to the formation of BASDA. KPMG, which was given responsibility for accrediting the products wanted £65,000 from each participant. Even though BASDA negotiated the fee down to £15,000, only one supplier went through the scheme and it flopped.
While the BSI kitemark might be relevant for children's car seats and other safety-related products, the ICAEW brand was more relevant to the buyer of an accounting package at PC World, Keeling suggested.
In his presentation on the future of audit, the Customs R&D chief made several claims about the consultation that had taken place with software developers and the IT Faculty around an OECD-backed international specification for tax software accreditation. These were swiftly counteracted in the ensuing debate by IT Faculty software tester John Oates.
"My understanding is that the person from the ICAEW who attended the steering meetings was a VAT expert and not aware of the IT implications," Oates told the gathering. "Maybe the BSI could talk to the people who are involved in the software accreditation scheme. It does 98% of what is required under the tax specification and it would be very simple to adapt."
Oates, Keeling and the IT Faculty scheme manager Craig McClellan where all seen in conversation with Customs officials after Stewart's talk. The trade show PR war and subsequent diplomacy appeared to have made progress, Oates said afterwards. He noted that the Customs was being more tentative about its kitemark idea and was keen to talk to the IT Faculty meeting.
Before going to meet with the ICAEW, Robert Brace from Customs said, "We're mapping our specification to [the ICAEW scheme] in detail to see whether we can work together. I'm confident the BSI will talk to the ICAEW and that we'll have a single standard."
After further talks at the exhibition, Oates commented that the Customs officials were more tentative in advancing their plans and were keen to talk further with the IT Faculty. He noted that during the presentation, one of Customs' objectives was to reduce the compliance burden on business.
"It's hard work for softare companies to get their products accredited. If the objective was to reduce the cost of compliance, how would asking developers to comply with two schemes achieve that?" he asked.
"I don't understand why Customs is considering a second accreditation scheme when there is a perfectly good one there already that has accredited 60 products from 40 vendors."
