Carter and his proposal...

System

At the Newcastle AAT meeting at the beginning of June we were all urged to write to the President of the AAT, local MPs, the press / anyone who will listen to appeal against moving the filing deadline.
Now I'm embarrased to say that I've not got round to it yet, and, (correct me if I'm wrong), there are others here who haven't done it yet either.

So what I was thinking is that if anyone wants to post their views here I would compile a big letter and send it off to any & every-one.

Please someone let me know if this goes against any rules of the forum, I'm not trying to cause trouble, I just think that it's very important that we act while it's not too late.

Personally, my biggest concern is how I'm going to cope with no (or very little) work for such a large portion of the year. I would seriously consider a complete career change if the deadline is moved, which would be very upsetting after all the work I've put in to become self employed.

What makes it more frustrating is that the arguments for moving the deadline seem to be very weak. It all seems so pointless, and will create a whole new set of problems which I doubt HMRC will be ready for.

One of the reasons tax returns are often filed late is to shorten the window for enquiries so surely by simply changing the rules to 'returns may be enquired into up to x months from the date of submission' then the appeal of submitting returns at the last minute is lost. In addition, I think that HMRC sould introduce incentives to file early which would spread their workload out over the year.


So what are your views? How would the changes affect you? What other options do we have?

If Carter does win this one I don't want to be kicking myself for not trying to do anything about it, I hope I'm not alone here!

System

Re:Carter and his proposal...

I think that all the major accounting bodies have jointly made a submission to Carter, and that he will "seriously listen" to any arguments put forward - we all wait with baited breath.

Everyone involved in tax will be badly affected if the recommendations do go ahead - all the big boys will be just as badly affected as the one man (woman!) bands like me - short of changing all our clients year ends to 30 April it is goodbye summer and hello skiing and all the resultant cash flow problems.

I think that all we can do now is wait and hope and pray and drink, and then drink some more......

Claudia

System

Re:Carter and his proposal...

Drats! I knew I should have done it sooner!

Onto plan B... where's that drink?!