How do you make an Income Tax Return fun?

Struggling to find ways to make your daily tasks more enjoyable? We asked Paul Donno, Director of 1Accounts Online Limited how he makes the dreaded Income Tax Return fun.

In the past us accountants would dread January, the long hours, dark nights (can’t play golf!) and clients putting pressure on at the last minute. With the introduction of cloud accounting and dealing with most issues during the year, the January deadline is less stressful here at 1 Accounts.

Our client’s affairs are up to date and if they are not that is really down to us most of the time. Our systems capture returns not completed yet and we have regular reports to help us file all of our clients returns on time and certainly 75% of our returns were filed before Christmas.

31 January used to be a day of dread, but I think we will celebrate with a beer down the pub knowing fully well that our competition are having a miserable day.

Apart from our accounts and tax software, one piece of software that really speeds our Tax Return processing up and that is DocuSign, the online electronic document signing service. Gone are the days of waiting for the post, or even getting a fax back, our returns are sent electronically and signed almost instantly.

Also for our companies the Dividends are voted during the year because we know how our client’s business are doing because they are on the cloud and we help them during the year to deal with their business and personal tax affairs not just in January.

We are also looking forward to Making Tax Digital and helping businesses to comply with quarterly HMRC processing, in our opinion we need strong procedures and first class online accounting software.