Happy New Tax Year

A new tax year a new tax form.

As part of its updating of the self assessment system, HMRC have produced a new self assessment form. This form is designed to be scanned into the Revenue computers rather than the old fashioned method of someone reading and typing the relevant numbers in. Unfortunately this means that the form is now designed with computers in mind, instead of human beings and is going to be much more difficult to complete - you must get the figures in the boxes or it will be rejected.

The alternative to hand writing one of these new forms is to complete the information online and this is definitely the way the tax authorities want us to move. There are a new set of tax return deadlines for this year which will require some tax payers to submit their hand written returns much earlier than they are used to. However the online form can still be submitted at any time up to 31 January.

I am pleased to say that our own tax software works exactly the same as it used to - we put information into our system under headings that we can understand and which have not changed from previous years and leave the software to decide which page to print the numbers out on. For tax payers who complete returns by hand, they are going to have to learn their way around the new form which is very different order to the old one.