Personal saving allowance: Do you still need to declare bank interest on a Self Asses

Pennywise

Funny thing is that it's going back to how it was before SA. Those of us who are old enough to have worked in tax in the early 90s will remember that the tax system was based on HMRC raising assessments based on what they knew, and making estimates of what they didn't, and it was up to the taxpayer (or their agent) to appeal and give them the right figures. "Pre-population" isn't a new thing - it's how it used to work, but it was manual in those days. Then SA came along and HMRC had institutional memory failure and required taxpayers to tell them everything via SA returns. I can't help thinking we've just wasted 20 years and millions of pounds on the SA system - HMRC should have just computerised their manual assessment raising system and saved a lot of people a lot of stress.

polymaff

Pennywise wrote: »

Funny thing is that it's going back to how it was before SA. Those of us who are old enough to have worked in tax in the early 90s will remember that the tax system was based on HMRC raising assessments based on what they knew, and making estimates of what they didn't, and it was up to the taxpayer (or their agent) to appeal and give them the right figures. "Pre-population" isn't a new thing - it's how it used to work, but it was manual in those days. Then SA came along and HMRC had institutional memory failure and required taxpayers to tell them everything via SA returns. I can't help thinking we've just wasted 20 years and millions of pounds on the SA system - HMRC should have just computerised their manual assessment raising system and saved a lot of people a lot of stress.

Indeed. The differences that make it a spiral rather than circular trajectory, though is that today's tax system is way beyond HMRC's ken.