TaxCalc Blog

Digital Tax Accounts and Quarterly Reporting

The Government today released a new document about Digital Tax Accounts. Entitled Making Tax Digital, it consolidates information that has been released into the public domain since the March Budget and lays out the roadmap by which HMRC will transform from its current regime to the new digital one.

Having read numerous articles in the press these last few days, many reporters have reiterated the fact that Digital Tax Accounts, both for individuals and businesses, will be the norm by 2020. However, what seems to have slipped somewhat under the radar by a few is the requirement for “most” self employed people and landlords to make quarterly returns from April 2018…

The Digital Tax Account – Public Beta and a New Name

On Tuesday 1 December 2015, HMRC formally launched the public beta of the Digital Tax Account, now renamed the Personal Tax Account (PTA).

The new service, as with all new Government projects, is to be delivered in a piecemeal fashion. In this article, we’ll take a look at what it can do…

A Glowing Review From ICPA

One of the great adages of all time is that “All publicity is good publicity” and course we always value feedback and reviews of our software whether positive or negative. It’s what helps us improve what we do and develop even better products. 

However, I tend to think that positivity creates more positivity, so I was delighted to read Tony Margaritelli, Chairman of the ICPA, recent review of TaxCalc published in the ICPA Magazine and it is definitely worth sharing…

The Office of Tax Simplification on Small Companies

The Office of Tax Simplification have released a survey to collect opinion about the taxes that small businesses pay to HMRC. The overall aim is to help them make recommendations to the powers that be that set our taxes.

The survey is open to those businesses that employ 10 or fewer people and covers all taxes.

If you would like to take part and voice your opinions, please follow this link.

TaxCalc Accounts Production Update – Part 2

In this article, we will continue looking at some of the improvements we have made to TaxCalc Accounts Production.

TaxCalc Accounts Production Update – Part 1

It’s our absolute pleasure to announce the roll out of a substantial update to TaxCalc Accounts Production. Many months in the making, this release will introduce new small company accounting standards, such as micro entities, FRSSE 2015 and FRS102 for small companies and a number of improvements in other areas.

TaxCalc customers will know we love listening to customer feedback. We’ve never been afraid of making changes and tweaks to the software and even, in some cases, rewriting the way something is done to make it even better.

In this first of two blog articles, we’ll take a look at what’s in store.

Protecting Yourself from Phishing Scams

In something of an irony (considering who’s received it), a phishing email beat my spam filter last night and landed in my personal inbox. Purporting to come from HMRC, I apparently have a VAT tax refund waiting for me and need to follow the link to fill out a form to claim it. What excitement for a Thursday evening!

I think that everyone will agree with me that this is really quite a suspicious looking email. However, looking today at the kinds of emails TaxCalc generally receives from HMRC, especially with regard to VAT and VAT MOSS, even official emails from HMRC can appear to be quite generic.

For example, VAT return reminders are addressed to Sir or Madam and VAT MOSS emails to just “VAT MOSS user”. Whilst said emails may quote the name of the company and our VAT number, these can easily be found on our website. 

The email prompted me to think about how we can stay safe with phishing scams.

TaxCalc Exhibiting at ICAEW Sole Practitioners Conference

TaxCalc are looking forward to exhibiting at the ICAEW Sole Practitioners Conference on 19^th and 20^th November in London.

This is one of four conference programs taking place at Practice 2015, ICAEW’s inaugural two-day conference.