Price Changes for Practices from 1 March 2016

There is an old saying that the only two things that you can rely upon in life are death and taxes. If you use software to run your practice, you can probably add price increases to that as well.

However, here at TaxCalc, we don’t take the usual industry line of raising prices by an arbitrary percentage every year. We’re different.

So different, in fact, that after five years of holding prices steady, it was only last year that we finally updated our catalogue and made some modest but necessary adjustments to a handful of our products. At the same time, we introduced an Early Renewal Discount, which for many customers actually rendered these increases moot and rewarded loyalty.

This year, we’re again taking an approach to price increases that is different to the industry…

Making Tax Digital – Quarterly Updates, Petitions, Debates and Research

I doubt that it will have escaped the reader of this blog that the Government has recently been extolling the virtues of its radical digital agenda. Back in the Autumn statement last December, it dropped something of a bombshell in the form of quarterly updates of accounting information for the self employed and, although rarely mentioned, for landlords too.

Rather than provide explanation as to how this could all work, the detail is still to follow. Indeed, various publications have recently been released by HMRC but they don’t exactly put much meat on the bones. There’s been research, which I’ll discuss later, but (at time of writing) we are still waiting for preliminary consultation, which will be followed by further consultation later this year.

And, of course, consultation generally only focuses upon one thing at a time. So there appears to be separate consultation to be had on quarterly updates, on the alignment of business activity to tax payments, on the penalties regime and so on.

Quite rightly, there has been much hubbub in the media and amongst both the accountancy practice and self employed industries. Again, I doubt it will have escaped you that there was a petition started to challenge “quarterly returns”. Having gained over 100,000 signatures, Her Majesty’s Government was required to debate the issue…

Behind the Scenes of Working with Government

Just before Christmas, there was a lot of discussion on AccountingWeb regarding quarterly reporting and the notion of there being a petition set up to challenge the strategy as announced in the Autumn Statement.

As an apolitical organisation, we won’t be drawn into whether quarterly reporting is a good idea or not but with 229 comments (at time of writing) on this particular thread, it’s clearly proven to be a fiercely debated topic.

One of the comments that caught my eye during the debate was a call for the Big Four firms and accountancy bodies to use their influence with HMRC.

This gave me two thoughts…

Digital Tax Accounts and Quarterly Reporting

The Government today released a new document about Digital Tax Accounts. Entitled Making Tax Digital, it consolidates information that has been released into the public domain since the March Budget and lays out the roadmap by which HMRC will transform from its current regime to the new digital one.

Having read numerous articles in the press these last few days, many reporters have reiterated the fact that Digital Tax Accounts, both for individuals and businesses, will be the norm by 2020. However, what seems to have slipped somewhat under the radar by a few is the requirement for “most” self employed people and landlords to make quarterly returns from April 2018…

The Digital Tax Account – Public Beta and a New Name

On Tuesday 1 December 2015, HMRC formally launched the public beta of the Digital Tax Account, now renamed the Personal Tax Account (PTA).

The new service, as with all new Government projects, is to be delivered in a piecemeal fashion. In this article, we’ll take a look at what it can do…

The Office of Tax Simplification on Small Companies

The Office of Tax Simplification have released a survey to collect opinion about the taxes that small businesses pay to HMRC. The overall aim is to help them make recommendations to the powers that be that set our taxes.

The survey is open to those businesses that employ 10 or fewer people and covers all taxes.

If you would like to take part and voice your opinions, please follow this link.

TaxCalc Accounts Production Update – Part 2

In this article, we will continue looking at some of the improvements we have made to TaxCalc Accounts Production.

TaxCalc Accounts Production Update – Part 1

It’s our absolute pleasure to announce the roll out of a substantial update to TaxCalc Accounts Production. Many months in the making, this release will introduce new small company accounting standards, such as micro entities, FRSSE 2015 and FRS102 for small companies and a number of improvements in other areas.

TaxCalc customers will know we love listening to customer feedback. We’ve never been afraid of making changes and tweaks to the software and even, in some cases, rewriting the way something is done to make it even better.

In this first of two blog articles, we’ll take a look at what’s in store.