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peter
righton all counts , and i love the way you listed all those points, begining not to care myself
what is a form 42!
The danger is
I believe the real danger is that most accountants work harder, and harder, at applying the rules, which are ever more complex. Most small business have no clue at all about Income shifting, IR35, associated company rules, VAT registration thresholds, Class 2 and 4 NIC maxima, GWR, CGT planning, The Flat Rate Scheme, restricted relief for losses, the remittance basis, UITF40, PILONs, 18% tax rates, repairs v capital improvements, new CAs scheme, etc. Yet they have to pay for the advice. The more complex you make it, the more work we have to do, and the more bewildered and disinterested the consumer / small entrepreneur / business owner becomes. He / she just want to go home, at night, having paid the "right amount of taxes". There is a real danger here that many taxpayers simply do not care very much, about the accuracy of their financial affairs.
Dear Rebecca
An empty wish alas: "please will someone who understands small businesses decide on policy and then make good clear law to back it up".
There are many of us out here who should be asked because there is certainly nobody in pwer who has the faintest glimmering of an understanding of small business.
I seem to remeber a few years back the Inland Revenue wanted a study done on small business so they naturally asked KPMG to do it. They don't have a flying clue about it either.
We small practitioners do. But nobody will ask us.
How right you are, Rebecca.
Government not fit for purpose?!
The whole system needs radical reform. After incessant tinkering with a post war model [ and the Motor vehicle ones also had the basics rooted in pre-war designs!] it reminds me of a Triumph Vitesse convertible I had in the 60`s, which, when I parted with it was more repair than original - remember Isopon?
The Tax System is similar, only worse. Using it is akin to coping with Motorway conditions in a Model T ford. The only sectors it benefits are lawyers and Govenments [mostly composed of 2nd rate lawyers] who wish to obfuscate their true motives.
Am I cynical? Oh- you noticed!
Mike.
The penny has dropped
I refer to your last paragraph - You are right - nobody gives a damn. Sadly this does not only refer to the tax system.
I would like to see sole trader & partnership tax returns filed within a set number of months of the traders' year end (12 or 18), 5th April could be kept for rental income etc. This would spread work loads in the profession and in the tax offices. Government cash flow would be over the year instead of two big lumps in January & July. Did this not work happily before S. A. ?
Are there any unsurmountable problems? - Apart from Accountants & Tax Advisors being able to have Christmas & New Year back to spend with their families.
I wish...
Someone would save me from this lunacy.
But it won't happen, our dear Gordon is a manic fiddler with no conception of the KISS principle. Talk about fiddling while Rome burns.
Still, Northern wreck will come home to roost soon
Won't it Darling!
Tax system is not a trifle
Sorry, Nichola - but how can the tax system be described as a "trifle"?
Trifles are sweet and easily digested.
Discretion and a lack of time prevent me from adding to Rebecca's list of woes about the current state of UK taxes.
Danger
We are entering extremely dangerous territory IMO with a combination of an increasingly de-motivated and de-skilled HMRC on one hand and a tax system growing in complexity and vagueness by the day - which by definition needs some very highly skilled HMRC staff to ensure even half decent compliance of.
If you are going to de-skill HMRC staff, then you need to make the taxes very simple and certain too not going in the complete opposite direction as its an open invitation for fraud and non-compliance.
I would quite agree that aligning the tax rates for Ltd co/s and sole traders and decide whether married couples should be taxed either (a) independently or (b) together [I really don't care which] that you would remove most of the problems except IR35 which would be just a function of employers NI once sole traders/ltd co.s tax has been sorted out.
Once all our toys are taken away, all we would be left to play with is making things capital gains and not income now there is such a staggering difference between the two, even for short held assets. Suits me quite frankly, my clients just want to know what their tax bill is, not what it might be based on one opinion and then based on another!
I am seriously thinking of putting a range of opinions on my letters to clients like pension advisor's do so I don't get into trouble for not disclosing possible interpretations of the new rules.
HMRC
Rebecca,
if the government doesn't want to improve HMRC then it is up to us to make them want to improve it, by shining a bright light on this most dysfunctional of organisations.
Politicians and those running HMRC may not care about detailed and complex policy discussions re tax, but they do care when they are publicly humiliated and made to look foolish and inept.
Ken Frost
Be careful what you wish for !
Rebecca
You are wishing for a policy initiative from government? Dangerous!
Government policy initiatives have a habit of destroying any good features of an existing system and replacing it with something that simply doesn't work.
In my neck of the woods I deal with a lot of solicitors and barristers attempting to survive the reform of criminal legal aid. (It's what Lord Carter did next after sorting out the Inland Revenue.) Don't mention policy initiatives within earshot of them for fear of a deluge of expletives!
Does anyone care?
Obviously not, and reading todays' lastest batch of consultations we are going to be in the most incredible chaos by the end of this year with an unworkable system that creates semi-automatic penalties.
What worries me most is that having made a total mess of HM Revenue and Customs, and having now turned the tax system into what can only be termed "trifle", Brown now has the NHS in his sights.