Sort of
If you’re lucky enough to earn a bit , you get to do a tax assessment and if you don’t – there really is no excuse – you’ve had enough warnings by text and mail.
When I first started doing them, I used to collect lots of pieces of paper to make sure I was inputting the right amounts, now I just double check the numbers input for me through HMT’s real time information against PDFs of key documents. Almost everything I needed was online and where I did have to input, there is now a handy section where you can post documents to HMT as attachments.
And when it comes to the complicated stuff, like CGT and all the reliefs and offsets that go with it, there’s plenty of online help. Finally, you get a calculation of the money you owe which plays back to you what you’ve told the computer. I made a few mistakes with inputting some numbers and got the wrong output, I was able to go back to screens where I’d filled in too many boxes and get to the right number (not the one I’d first thought of).
My takeaways from all this are
- Here is a Government system that really works.
- It’s a system that evolves every year and clearly uses feedback in a clever way
- If HMT can do it, why is it so hard for other big projects (medical records, pension dashboard etc)
- Thanks to HMT’s IT people – good job.
I’ve still got a big fat tax bill but I now know a lot more about how tax works and though I am always petrified as my finger hovers over “submit”, I am confident that the computer won’t say no and pretty soon I will be sitting back with bills paid and the smug look of a person who knows the taxman nothing.
It surprises me that we talk so little about tax returns, millions of us do them and they dominate our Januarys (if employed) and other points of the year (if self-employed) as we ponder if this year mightn’t be the one when we give a pile of paper to an accountant to do it for us.
The last time I did that was in the 1980s and I’m sure that if I’d had the capacity to DIY my tax then , as I do now, I’d have saved myself a shed load of fees.
Maybe completing a tax-return, like going to the toilet, is something we don’t share and maybe you are reading this saying “what a dumb-cluck this fellow is”, but I bet the majority of my readers are either in a state of relief or mild panic with just 9 days to go to the deadline.
My message to those who haven’t completed your tax-return is “don’t worry” and my message to those who have is “be happy”.
