As HMRC rushes through its digitisation programme, it is fraught with difficulties and the failure to do sufficient pre-testing before release of the online replacement for employment related securities form 42 is creating a headache for tax advisers, warns Yvette Nunn, director of Berkeley Associates
HMRC is going too far and too fast with its digitalisation of forms, forcing businesses to use unfinished, untested and ill thought out systems, costing the profession and our Great British industry tens of thousands, as they try to comply.
I highlight one form, for Employment Related Securities, Form 42. Gone is the paper return, and instead employers have no choice but to file the form online using HMRC’s BETA facility.
HMRC’s BETA service has been in the pipeline for a long time, but ready or not someone made the decision to make the use mandatory for the July filing deadline and to rub salt into the already open wound, whomever wrote the online return completion page has the audacity to add at the top of the page, ‘BETA this is a trial service. Help us improve it – send your feedback’. Why should advisers and businesses who foot the bill, be forced to test their systems, by making online completion mandatory?
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