Paul Aplin

Member Since: 12th Mar 2020
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Paul Aplin was for many years a tax partner with an independent West Country firm. He is a past president of ICAEW, a former Chair of the ICAEW Tax Faculty, a member of CIOT Council and the Tax Technology Committee of CFE. He is a non-executive director of three companies, a member of HMRC’s Admin Burdens Advisory Board and the OTS Board.
He is an enthusiast for using digital technology to improve business and tax administration and filed the UK's first electronic self-assessment tax return in 1997. He was appointed OBE in 2009 for services to the accountancy profession and for public service.
Former Tax & IT Partner
12th Oct 2023
ABAB small business survey is food for thought
HMRC’s Administrative Burdens Advisory Board (ABAB), chaired by Dame Teresa Graham, exists to understand the experience of small businesses...
HMRC & policy
3rd May 2023
HMRC’s future requires updated data gathering
I recently wrote about one of the discussion documents released on Budget Day, Simplifying and modernising HMRC’s income tax services...
HMRC & policy
14th Dec 2022
Can a chatbot give tax advice?
At the end of my last piece for AccountingWEB, I touched on the potential for artificial intelligence (AI) to impact on advisory work. I...
Tech pulse
8th Dec 2022
Prompts and nudges: Who’s to blame when they fail?
During the Tax Talk Live session I took part in at the recent AccountingWEB Live Expo, someone asked a question about late VAT registration...
HMRC & policy
18th Nov 2022
The pull of the fiscal black hole
Perhaps it is my age, perhaps it is a kind of OCD, but sometimes when I am reading, I find that I must keep flipping back to a single line...
HMRC & policy
9th Aug 2022
MTD ITSA: A question of capacity
Over recent months more detail has emerged about the mechanics of MTD ITSA: how the quarterly reports will align, the complexity that basis...
HMRC & policy
7th Jul 2022
Awareness key to solving repayment agent issues
A few weeks ago, I suggested that HMRC should be more proactive in helping taxpayers to make routine claims. I had in mind the kind of...
Personal tax
26th May 2022
HMRC not HVAs should prompt routine rebate claims
Recently, while reading the online edition of a well-known newspaper, I was confronted with one of those incredibly annoying pop-up adverts...
HMRC & policy
24th Mar 2022
Spring Statement: A clear direction of travel?
Perhaps the least surprising line in the Spring Statement Blue Book was that “the uncertainty surrounding the Office for Budget...
Business tax
22nd Mar 2022
The Single Customer Account: A key piece of HMRC’s digital jigsaw
Making Tax Digital (MTD) is only one element in the digital transformation of tax administration. Technology offers many possibilities, not...
Accounting software