The future of tax: A tax professionals survey 2020

No one could have foreseen the events of the past few months. For accountants and tax professionals it was to be a busy period regardless, with one financial year turning into another with IR35 and MTD grabbing the market’s immediate attention.

As the coronavirus pandemic started to take its toll, the professions’ daily workload quickly changed – as did the advice they would give their changing client base and their internal resources. And they’ve been kept busy: cash flow has become the most pressing priority for most going concerns, and the UK government’s many different initiatives to keep businesses afloat have kept accountants up late at night as they consider the best advice to give their clients during a period of profound uncertainty. The delays to IR35, MTD and the VAT deferral have rewritten the way those within accounting will operate in the months ahead.

As the coronavirus crisis unfolded, Accountancy Age – in partnership with Tax Systems – was surveying our readership with regards to attitudes and preparedness for MTD, digital resources, and how businesses were dealing with VAT reporting as these were the three most important pertinent issues on the industry’s mind at that time. Here, we present the results of our research, revealing just how the industry was positioned.

Here, therefore, we present a clear snapshot of where the market was when the crisis hit, illuminating just how well prepared – or not – we were.