What is the AWEB community's view of the quality of the Bloomsbury tax annuals vs that of the Tolley's? I bought the former some years ago (when they were first launched by Tottel, I believe) and was not overly impressed. Have they improved in the intervening years and do they offer as much detail as the excellent Tolley's annuals? There's a huge price difference (£350 for Bloomsbury vs £734 for Tolley's) for the core set, so do you really get what you pay for?
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Hi Charlie - I went through something similar a few years back however for me it was a toss up between CCH's online service, and Bloomsbury.
To be honest, CCH's service, that I used for many years (after dropping the ton of annual paper from Tolleys) was excellent and resolved a problem I always had with annuals that they were pretty much out of date as soon as they were published. It also had the added bonus of "free" tax/VAT helplines, which saved me on several occasions. (I still use these via fee protection with CCH).
However, it was extremely expensive and, as the years went by and more information became generally available from HMRC, here and other resources, I found I was referring to it less and less. Consequently I tried out Bloomsbury for a year but I found I got what I paid for.
Anyway, with a reducing client base I made the decision two years back not to buy in any information and, despite the fear of being left in the dark, have not missed it at all and, as I say, I have CCH helplines for anything too complex for my reducing brain cells.
The ICPA organisation, provide access to Bloomsbury, with the cost of annual membership. In addition I subscribe to Nichola Ross-Martin's practical tax resources, which proves invaluable and, is an extremely worthwhile subscription.
As Paul suggests I also fill in the missing gaps, with options elsewhere.
It shouldn't be asking too much to assume that you could rely on the data which HMRC produces. Regretfully, in a number of cases, the interpretation of legislation is simply HMRC's guideline.
I am these days a Bloomsbury (via ICPA) user and Tolleys is now restricted to particular publications, like their Tolley's Property Taxatation (though not bought it now for quite a few years).
Bloomsbury actually do similar publications re property taxation which I have found to be good.
I think Bloomsbury have improved a bit but Tolleys are, imho, a better set of annuals (just far too expensive)
