Spin II

Ironically, a few days after I wrote this:

"Lumping tax avoidance with tax evasion is part of the ongoing game of media spin and manipulation being played by the government and HMRC, to make people think of them as the same.

They are not the same!

Like it or not, tax avoidance is legitimate and will be with us as long as there are taxes."

Mike Warburton, private client director at Grant Thornton, was quoted in Accountancy Age:

"The government has tried to treat avoidance and evasion as if one is leading into the other.

It's perfectly clear avoidance is legal, evasion isn't; but the Revenue is trying to muddy the lines between them."

Tax does have to be taxing.

Professional Cover Against the Threat of Costly TAX and VAT Investigations

What is TAXWISE?

TAXWISE is a tax-fee protection service that will pay up to £75,000 towards your accountant's fees in the event of an HM Revenue & Customs full enquiry or dispute.

To find out more, please use this link Taxwise

Tax Investigation for Dummies, by Nick Morgan, provides a good and easy to read guide for anyone caught up in an HMRC tax investigation. A must read for any Self Assessment taxpayer.

Click the link to read about: Tax Investigation for Dummies

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"

Online Glitch

It seems that, ironically at the very same time that HMRC are telling people to avoid problems with the post strike and file online, people are experiencing problems with HMRC's online self-assessment system.

The Telegraph reports some people have been met with messages on screen saying that there had been an error, and that it was "unable to verify" that their information had been successfully submitted. The Times letters page also reports problems.

Spiffing!

A spokesman for HMRC is quoted by the paper:

"We are very sorry if anyone has had trouble getting through and we will look into any particular problems but the vast majority of taxpayers are not experiencing any difficulties.

There are still nearly four months left to file on-line but it's best to do so early because the system becomes extremely busy during January."

This implies that the system cannot handle peak load.

Tax does have to be taxing.

Professional Cover Against the Threat of Costly TAX and VAT Investigations

What is TAXWISE?

TAXWISE is a tax-fee protection service that will pay up to £75,000 towards your accountant's fees in the event of an HM Revenue & Customs full enquiry or dispute.

To find out more, please use this link Taxwise

Tax Investigation for Dummies, by Nick Morgan, provides a good and easy to read guide for anyone caught up in an HMRC tax investigation. A must read for any Self Assessment taxpayer.

Click the link to read about: Tax Investigation for Dummies

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"

Incoherent

The National Audit Office recently reported that approximately 1.5M pensioners have overpaid around £250M in tax since 2002-3, as a result of discrepancies between HMRC records and tax deducted by employers and pension providers.

On the flip side of the coin, approximately 500,000 pensioners have underpaid approximately £103M of tax.

Amyas Morse, head of the NAO, has called on HMRC to provide a more coherent service:

"Older people want to pay the right amount of tax, but too many pay more than they need to because they do not claim allowances to which they are entitled and because of errors.

By providing a more coherent service, HMRC could make substantial savings as the number of enquiries from older people about their tax affairs would reduce - a win-win situation for all."

This situation is not entirely of HMRC's making, a large "dollop of blame pie" must be dished up to the government for creating such a complex and unwieldy tax system in the first place.

How on earth are people (taxpayers and those who work for HMRC, who are also taxpayers) meant to be au fait with this behemoth that they have created?

Tax does have to be taxing.

Professional Cover Against the Threat of Costly TAX and VAT Investigations

What is TAXWISE?

TAXWISE is a tax-fee protection service that will pay up to £75,000 towards your accountant's fees in the event of an HM Revenue & Customs full enquiry or dispute.

To find out more, please use this link Taxwise

Tax Investigation for Dummies, by Nick Morgan, provides a good and easy to read guide for anyone caught up in an HMRC tax investigation. A must read for any Self Assessment taxpayer.

Click the link to read about: Tax Investigation for Dummies

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"

Wooden Money

The Herald reports that a number of Scottish councils are getting very excited over the possibility of receiving tax rebates on VAT overpayments made during earlier periods (in some cases claims have been made dating back 35 years).

Seemingly councils, individuals and companies have received, to date, around £1.5BN in rebates from HMRC; eg Glasgow recovered £2.6M in VAT wrongly accounted for on hostel charges from 1974 to 1996, as well £3M in interest.

The councils will use the money to offset budget cuts.

All very well, maybe.

However, the rebates of "wooden money" are merely going from one organ of the state to another; no real income in the overall scheme of public finances has been received, the money "gained" by the councils will have to be saved elsewhere by the government and cuts then passed on to the councils.

They are spending time, effort and money scrambling after "wooden money"

Tax does have to be taxing.

Professional Cover Against the Threat of Costly TAX and VAT Investigations

What is TAXWISE?

TAXWISE is a tax-fee protection service that will pay up to £75,000 towards your accountant's fees in the event of an HM Revenue & Customs full enquiry or dispute.

To find out more, please use this link Taxwise

Tax Investigation for Dummies, by Nick Morgan, provides a good and easy to read guide for anyone caught up in an HMRC tax investigation. A must read for any Self Assessment taxpayer.

Click the link to read about: Tax Investigation for Dummies

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"

Spin

The Financial Secretary to the Treasury, Stephen Timms, is quoted in Accountancy Age:

"This Government will not tolerate tax avoidance or tax evasion in any form, and will act promptly to tackle both of these."

Lumping tax avoidance with tax evasion is part of the ongoing game of media spin and manipulation being played by the government and HMRC, to make people think of them as the same.

They are not the same!

Like it or not, tax avoidance is legitimate and will be with us as long as there are taxes.

Tax does have to be taxing.

Professional Cover Against the Threat of Costly TAX and VAT Investigations

What is TAXWISE?

TAXWISE is a tax-fee protection service that will pay up to £75,000 towards your accountant's fees in the event of an HM Revenue & Customs full enquiry or dispute.

To find out more, please use this link Taxwise

Tax Investigation for Dummies, by Nick Morgan, provides a good and easy to read guide for anyone caught up in an HMRC tax investigation. A must read for any Self Assessment taxpayer.

Click the link to read about: Tax Investigation for Dummies

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"

The Post Strike II

"Any returns that are late due to the postal strike will not incur a fine as long as they can produce proof of postage, confirmed a HMRC spokeswoman".

Accountancy Age

Tax does have to be taxing.

Professional Cover Against the Threat of Costly TAX and VAT Investigations

What is TAXWISE?

TAXWISE is a tax-fee protection service that will pay up to £75,000 towards your accountant's fees in the event of an HM Revenue & Customs full enquiry or dispute.

To find out more, please use this link Taxwise

Tax Investigation for Dummies, by Nick Morgan, provides a good and easy to read guide for anyone caught up in an HMRC tax investigation. A must read for any Self Assessment taxpayer.

Click the link to read about: Tax Investigation for Dummies

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"