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Bloomsbury launches online tax planning tool

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21st Nov 2012
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Bloomsbury Professional has introduced an online toolkit called Tax Planner Interactive (TPI).

Devised by Nick Parkes of Business Focus fame, the system is available for an annual subscription of £250+VAT and is designed to equip general practitioners for the kind of tax advice they might otherwise have to refer elsewhere.

On logging in, the user is presented with a simple choice of six main planning areas: Starting a business; growing a business; dividing a business; leaving a business; CGT planning; and IHT planning.

“We based the content on the things people keep asking us, and put the most popular things at top,” Parkes told AccountingWEB.

“The main challenge was to present the information in a way that was useful rather than the usual tome on tax planning, which can end up being a dense list of different kinds of reliefs.

Users are guided through the planning scenario by a short questionnaires to get to the right solution, at which point interactive planner takes them to the next stage in its step-by-step structure.

These resources include letter templates for clients and HMRC, legislation and guidance, links to official forms, a printable checklist to monitor progress and a list of tips and traps to alert the adviser to potential pitfalls.

Parkes likened the development of his latest tax information product to Richard Arkwright and his spinning jenny. “You do the same mechanical task year after year and start to wonder if it could be done any other way. If we can think it through, a computer can too - and will make it cheaper and more accessible for accountants,” he said.

TPI will remain a work in progress throughout its life, Parkes added. Having started with the most popular planning topics, he and his team will add to it based on user feedback and scenarios they encounter in their day-to-day consultancy work.

With “aggressive” tax planning in the news, Parkes explained that that was one area the toolkit would avoid. “It’s not looking for loopholes, it’s recognising where legislation can be used and using it in the way it’s intended used,” he said.

“If there’s a step you can’t tell HMRC about, it has to go back to the drawing board.”

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