fourth issue - February 2008

Introduction

Welcome to the fourth issue of Agent Update. It’s been a busy time for consultations recently, with no fewer than seven currently live. To save you time, we’ve summarised each one and put them all together in one section, to enable you to quickly identify the topics on which you want to have your say.

We recognise that not all of the topics covered will be relevant to you. By ‘scanning’ the brief introductions to each piece, you should be able to identify your own most relevant ones within a couple of minutes and can then click on the link to view the full information.

If there are any other areas you would like to see covered in future issues of Agent Update, or you have any other suggestions, please let us know by visiting the feedback page and selecting ‘Tax Agents section of the Practitioner Zone’ from the list.

This month’s top article

Returns filed 1 February treated as on time

HMRC’s Self Assessment online filing service enabled a record number of customers to file their tax returns online this year. By 5pm on 1 February 2008, nearly 3.8 million online returns had been received.

There were some problems with the service on 31 January and 1 February. Once the system was up and running again it performed satisfactorily and by midnight on 31 January 204,000 returns had been received – a record for any day. The majority of online returns were unaffected but some users experienced delays and difficulties in accessing the system and obviously we take any service disruption very seriously – especially on deadline day.

We have consistently said that nobody will be unfairly penalised for filing late due to problems with HMRC systems close to the deadline. All returns filed on 1 February will therefore be treated as filed on time.

This update is also available in PDF format. To view these documents you need to use a PDF file viewer such as Adobe Reader.

• Agent Update Issue 4 - February 2008 (PDF 152K)