21 Oct 2009
How much tax technical help do you expect from your self assessment tax software? ALLISON PLAGER reports.
KEY POINTS
- HMRC help is the main source of support.
- Users do not expect tax technical help from software providers.
- Extra technical help is sometimes provided at extra cost.
It’s tax return season again. Paper returns have to be submitted by 31 October, a few exceptions aside, but the deadline for returns filed online remains at 31 January.
Given that most returns are now filed electronically, that means that many of us have just over three months in which to get the returns done.
Many taxpayers’ affairs are straightforward. It is just a case of digging out the relevant papers and entering the relevant data into the boxes on the online form.
Any problems can usually be sorted out by a quick look at the HMRC-provided help notes that accompany the return. Failing that, the non-represented taxpayer can call the HMRC helplines. These tend to give a varying standard of help, but should be enough to sort out most queries.
The problem comes when the tax return is being completed on, say 30 January, and the helpline operator says a technical expert will be available within the next six days.
Not the most useful response, but one that does occur (personal experience confirms this). So what do you do in those circumstances?
Well, taxpayers lucky enough to have at hand the relevant Tolley’s tax annual may be able to manage with that.
But what other sources are available? If you are using personal tax self assessment software, it will come with some help.
This article is, however, not concerned with the sort of help that you need to instal the program, sort out glitches in the software, or generally how to use it, rather it looks at the tax technical help supplied.
Does the software provide any help if something crops up taxwise and the user is unsure what to do?
What do you get?
A brief questionnaire on the subject of tax technical help was sent to various personal tax self assessment suppliers.
On the whole, the replies showed that suppliers tend not to offer more than HMRC’s notes and frequently asked questions, although some have telephone support which can answer technical tax questions. See the table Help options, which can be downloaded at the foot of this article as a PDF in two parts.
Again, it must be emphasised that this does not include information about help in using the software.
Digita Personal Tax, for example, does not contain any tax technical content other than ‘the barest minimum to meet the compliance needs of tax return production (e.g. to explain the reason for a required entry)’. Consequently other reference material may be needed by the user.
As Nigel Powell, a spokesperson from Digita, part of Thomson Reuters, says, the company has dedicated help ‘but this describes how to use the software to complete a compliance task. It does not attempt to inform or guide the user as to the tax law or provide tax guidance’.
Interestingly, he says that Digita ‘used to provide context-sensitive help embedded within our own help text which would click through directly to online or CD-based versions of Simon’s Taxes but, while this seemed a good idea, it has withered and died through complete lack of interest on the part of our tax agent clients’. It is therefore no longer supported.
Nigel, who has been involved in personal tax software for over 20 years, feels that ‘although logically a tax content supplier and a tax software supplier should provide both, in practice it seems not to make that much sense to practitioners.
So when buying tax software it is a rare-to-never asked for feature. Almost certainly it has to do with the fact that if the tax research is that complex it is unlikely that it would have direct relevance to the simple compliance process of completing tax return entries’.
On reflection, he suggests that this makes some sense ‘since accounting firms negotiate separate contracts for the supply of tax content from their tax software and with often different users of both’.
Users of CCH’s software who also subscribe to its online products can link through to the legislation and HMRC manuals provided by CCH.
However, when speaking to a user, while this function is appreciated, relatively little use is made of it.
The user said that in practice those completing the returns tend to know where information has to go and the tax consequences. The first port of call tends to be the relevant HMRC tax return help.
Simply unnecessary
Overall, the responses show that, other than access to the HMRC help, more tax technical help is largely neither expected nor required. What users do want is software that works so they can submit clients’ tax returns efficiently.
The software’s functionality is clearly of most importance – and it is telling that even with a pretty comprehensive package, such as that offered by Digita, the tax technical help included is, by the company’s own admission, slight.
Advisers who come across tax technical problems are more likely to go direct to the legislation to find the answer, or even google for information if, that is, they are unable to find it in HMRC help sheets.
Perhaps not unreasonably, users do not expect the software provider to be the technical expert as well.
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