When the tax year never ends
THE revenue service’s latest plea for tax returns to be submitted by the due date appears to have fallen on at least 4,000 sets of deaf ears.
Some say they’ve submitted these forms, some say they’ve got lost, others say ‘what forms?’ and many more have no confidence that the forms and assessment will be dealt with in any reasonable time frame.
Revenue blunders along with seemingly no hope of ever getting all islanders’ tax affairs up to date. Income tax has taken on ‘Forth Bridge’ proportions… nobody knows when it ever ends or starts, but it’s always on the go, somewhere.
We don’t know if talk of bringing in former staff or tax-savvy accountants to help out has ever materialised but it doesn’t appear to have made much difference. Meanwhile you’re not encouraged to hassle for updates or even ask questions as there’s no capacity to deal with the complaints.
Older islanders are hugely resistant to doing their forms online while many at the younger end of the workforce are totally unaware of what they need to do, and don’t get reminders or warnings.
And now we enter the new environment of independent taxation, requiring more form filing, collation and assessment for an already-stretched department.
Meanwhile nobody takes political responsibility, nor seems to have any real ideas on how to improve things. Suppose the only ‘good news’ is there’s the best part of £1m. in fines to be collected – at some point.