20% of small businesses to miss tax deadline
HMRC expected to rake in £200m in fines as business minnows say they will be submitting their tax returns late
Research has revealed that nearly 20% of small business owners admit that
they do not expect to get their tax returns in on time this year, which will put
£200m into the taxman’s coffers from the resulting fines.
According to accounting software company
KashFlow, 32% of small
business owners said that this was due to the fact the self-assessment forms
were too confusing. 48% said that they had not sent the documents through to
their accountant on time.
13% of respondents said that they were too busy to get the forms completed
and 9% said they had not seen HM Revenue&Custom’s advertising campaigns and
simply forgot they had to do it.
In its poll of 750 small business owners, KashFlow found that the percentage
of late filers was up from 14% in the previous year.
KashFlow MD Duane Jackson said: ‘It is really worrying that there is still a
huge amount of people out there who aren’t keeping on top of their bookkeeping
so as to get information over to their accountant on time. A few years ago this
would have been understandable, but it’s really inexcusable now that there are
accounting packages available that make this a relatively easy task.’
Further reading:
Two-tier HMRC
tax filing system uncovered
