LITRG's 40 Pillars of Wisdom

 

Given that tax professionals have enough trouble trying to understand tax legislation and deal with HMRC, it is hardly surprising that the hapless taxpayers are completely at sea.

As such, the Low Incomes Tax Reform Group have come up with 40 recommendations  Good Guidance: The importance of effective guidance for unrepresented taxpayers, that they hope HMRC will adhere to in order to help the hapless taxpayers who fund the state and its organs. 

Here are the first 10 recommendations, the full report can be accessed via the link above.

Recommendation 1: The level of technical detail offered by a page of guidance should be immediately clear when landing on a page. 

Recommendation 2: HMRC should publish guidelines to help guidance writers decide what matters and circumstances to include and exclude. 

Recommendation 3: HMRC should consider how their user testing can be expanded to determine whether users get to the right answer, not just whether they find guidance easy to use. 

Recommendation 4: HMRC and GDS should review ‘user need’ requirements from the perspective of unrepresented taxpayers, to ensure they do not represent a barrier to effective guidance being published for this group. 

Recommendation 5: The GOV.UK feedback route which offers a reply to the user should be easier to find. 

Recommendation 6: HMRC should design and implement an ongoing process to help proactively identify areas where guidance is missing, and rectify these areas as soon as they are identified. 

Recommendation 7: Whenever any changes or new policies are introduced, there should be a published guidance assessment to ensure that any associated guidance is as complete as possible. 

Recommendation 8: The search function on GOV.UK should be much improved to ensure users are directed to the most appropriate pages, potentially by working with commercial search engines to improve underlying technologies behind it. 

Recommendation 9: Guidance should always clearly state its intended audience and scope. 

Recommendation 10: Where exceptions apply, links should be provided to more information on those exceptions

I wish the LITRG good luck in trying to get HMRC to implement these, given that had HMRC followed its charter the recommendations would in the main be unnecessary!

Tax does have to be taxing.

Tax Investigation Insurance

Market leading tax fee protection insurance for businesses, sole traders and individuals. Protect yourself from accountancy fees in the event of an HMRC enquiry.

Having a Solar Protect Tax Investigation Insurance policy at your disposal means that should you be one of the many 1000's of businesses or individuals that are selected by HMRC each year to look into your tax affairs your own accountant (your tax return agent) can get on and defend you robustly.

You have the peace of mind knowing that your accountant's (your tax return agent) fees will be paid by the insurance without any Excess for you to find.

Tax Investigation Insurance is an insurance policy that will fully reimburse your accountant's (your tax return agent) fees up to £100,000 if you are subject to enquiry by or dispute with HMRC.

A Solar Protect policy will enable your accountant (your tax return agent) to:

• Deal with any correspondence from HMRC
• Attend any meeting with HMRC
• Appeal to the First-tier Tribunal or Upper Tribunal
• Having the security of knowing that fees will be met in full will enable your Accountant (your tax return agent) to defend your position robustly

Please click here for details.

HMRC Is Shite (www.hmrcisshite.com), also available via the domain www.hmrconline.com, is brought to you by www.kenfrost.com "The Living Brand"