Three million tax returns left to submit
HMRC has revealed that over three million tax returns need to be completed before the 31 January deadline, as accountants make the final push towards the finish line.
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And only 7 of them belong to my clients - yay! One thinks that it is still far too early to bring me their paperwork, well they can go whistle Dixie, the others will all be filed in time, including the one that has been given a 5 week extension :-)
Why does this article assume that accountants will be submitting these 3 million returns? I think it is much more likely that the vast majority are un represented taxpayers who are leaving it until the last minute.
Well quite. We filed (or at least prepared) around 300 before Xmas and have done 15 or so in Jan.
I now have 9 out for signature or payment, and 7 not complete, but deliberately so as they did not come in until Jan so I want them to get a squeaky backside, albeit all are very quick returns, I could do all 7 in under a day.
“ With the self assessment deadline looming, figures released from HMRC last Friday shows that three million tax returns still need to be filed.
HMRC started 2020 with five million tax returns still outstanding. Although two million have since been filed, that still leaves a considerable amount of returns for accountants to shovel in the last remaining days of January.”
Say what you want about HMRC but that is impeccable maths.
Not exactly news, is it?
I haven't checked but this could be a straight cut and paste from the article posted this time last year, and the year before, and the year before . . . . . .
Nothing changes
It is only the most straight forward of returns which may be prepared April, May June. 31st March year end clients will not have their stuff ready for at least three or four months.
Further I have noticed at least one practice which "Stores" all its approved returns in a bundle. It then undertakes a major filing exercise in January.
I know a practice like this too - will store every single SA return to file at a chosen point mid January with the rationale that this limits the enquiry risk by filing them alongside millions of others while not raising a red flag by filing on the 31st.
They possibly misunderstand how the enquiry window works but aside from what it is they feel the need to hide, you can only imagine how stressful this is for the staff and the clients trying to make online payments.
What bugs me is that the media is full of tax return preparation stories as though doing your tax return in the last week of January is the norm. Maybe it is for the journalists who write these articles.
Just think what fun we'll all have when HMRC introduce MTD for everyone and then move from quarterly to monthly to real time filing with daily deadlines across your entire client base.
We'll look back oh so fondly at the once per annum January rush.