Assessing Self Assessment. Response to the Public Consultation on Self Assessment

Public Consultation

6. We always recognised that we would need to monitor very closely how Self Assessment was actually operating on a day to day basis. To determine that, we announced on 23 February 1998 the launch of a public consultation exercise called 'Your chance to assess Self Assessment'. We asked people to tell us what aspects of Self Assessment were working well and what aspects could be improved.

7. Exactly 400 responses were received. Around one third of these came from individuals - many of whom were pensioners. The remainder came almost wholly from agents - mostly accountants - or from bodies representing accountants or businesses. We are very grateful to everyone who responded.

8. Overall, the response has shown two things:

• on the positive side, it has confirmed that there is nothing fundamentally wrong with the principle of Self Assessment or with the way it was designed, introduced and is currently operating. Specifically, there has been widespread recognition of the efforts made by Revenue staff, in difficult circumstances, to help taxpayers and agents through the first year; but

• on the other hand, it has emphasised that in a number of areas there is room for improvement - particularly in the accuracy of some of our day to day work, in certain aspects of our procedures and in the customer friendliness of some of our forms.

9. This report describes the main concerns expressed, explains what we have done already to address some of these and indicates what more we are planning to do. Where we do not think change is called for we also explain why.