I deal mainly with medical professionals. For the most part, they are pretty hopeless at record-keeping and looking after their tax affairs generally. However, they are nearly always happy to acknowledge this and are very grateful when someone (me) sorts it all out for them.
When I dealt with lawyers of various hues, by contrast, I found them to be equally hopeless but generally awkward and arrogant. I think part of the problem is that they know a little bit about tax from some point in their training (mostly out of date and irrelevant) and so try to tell us our job and insist they know best. So glad that I specialise in the healthcare sector now!
The whole merging in of Class 2 into the SA system has been a bit problematic. I have had HMRC issue an SA302 to remove the Class 2 charge on several occasions and have had to rectify this out of concern that it could affect the client's "qualifying years" position. Then there's the clients who have Class 1 earnings over the UEL (so you would think they will exceed the Class 1/2 maximum) but, because that maximum is worked out based on 53 weeks of Class 1 rather than 12 months, the clients still end up paying some Class 2, usually about £80. The sooner Class 2 is merged with Class 4 the better from that point of view.
My answers
I deal mainly with medical professionals. For the most part, they are pretty hopeless at record-keeping and looking after their tax affairs generally. However, they are nearly always happy to acknowledge this and are very grateful when someone (me) sorts it all out for them.
When I dealt with lawyers of various hues, by contrast, I found them to be equally hopeless but generally awkward and arrogant. I think part of the problem is that they know a little bit about tax from some point in their training (mostly out of date and irrelevant) and so try to tell us our job and insist they know best. So glad that I specialise in the healthcare sector now!
The whole merging in of Class 2 into the SA system has been a bit problematic. I have had HMRC issue an SA302 to remove the Class 2 charge on several occasions and have had to rectify this out of concern that it could affect the client's "qualifying years" position. Then there's the clients who have Class 1 earnings over the UEL (so you would think they will exceed the Class 1/2 maximum) but, because that maximum is worked out based on 53 weeks of Class 1 rather than 12 months, the clients still end up paying some Class 2, usually about £80. The sooner Class 2 is merged with Class 4 the better from that point of view.