smallbrother
Elder Statesman
Errors aplenty, progress slow, but progress nonetheless!
Posts: 2,269
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Post by smallbrother on Mar 22, 2020 9:29:45 GMT
When I went self employed I rang the tax office to get advice about my returns.
Might this be a good first move? Not being facetious but the person I spoke to was actually very helpful. I guess I shouldn't have been so surprised.
Pete.
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uuu
Elder Statesman
your message here...
Posts: 2,808
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Post by uuu on Mar 22, 2020 9:43:59 GMT
I've always found the tax people to be helpful, too. On the phone and in person.
During a VAT inspection, our tax man found a wheeze that could generate quite a large rebate. But this was from a prior period that was closed, so nothing doing. "Bring me the petty cash book" he asked. Soon enough he found a minor error. "Alas I shall have to reopen this prior period, and charge you for this minor error". "Oh, and give you this large rebate".
Wilf
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Post by Roger on Mar 22, 2020 10:24:03 GMT
I too found the tax help line very good, and they were fairly quick to answer the phone too. To be honest, a lot of what you have to answer is not applicable, but you usually have to follow the link to the note to make heads or tails of it. I'm sure they think they've done a great job with the web site, but that's because they know all about it. What they really need to do is to stand back and watch a few hundred users get baffled and pull their hair out so that they can address the issues and make it much simpler and clearer. Obviously it's not in the interest of Accountants, and the Tax Office presumably made online services available for their own convenience and efficiency. However, that's not an excuse for making it more readily understood for the bulk of small businesses which are actually pretty simple affairs. It's those who need to make sure they don't waste money unnecessarily on professional fees.
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