TaxSource Total

Here you can access summary of the key current tax developments in Ireland, the UK and internationally as reported by Chartered Accountants Ireland

The report of key tax developments are displayed per year, per month, by Ireland, the UK or International and by report title

Key messages

  • In line with the Government’s ‘Digital by Default’ agenda HMRC is looking at how it can provide greater choice and more flexible services to agents (and all customers) through increased use of digital channels.
  • We have recently re-organised our Business Customer and Strategy teams, bringing together the work previously done on agent engagement through Working Together and the Agent Account Manager (AAM) service and the work on SME education, into one team, Digital Support for Business and Agents.
  • The new team will build on successes in reaching and engaging SME’s through digital tools. We will work with agents and their professional bodies to develop new methods for supporting agents digitally whilst ensuring that the digital support we provide improves our engagement and meets agents’ needs.
  • Moving towards digital support and services means that we will inevitably take a step back from some of our face-to-face engagement. That does not mean we will withdraw from face-to-face entirely but we will explore the potential, in discussions with agents’ representatives, for engaging in a different way and taking a fresh approach to, for example, how we support meetings (including Working Together meetings) and meet requests for speakers.
  • We know that Working Together is about a lot more than just local meetings. It looks for ways to improve HMRC’s operations for the benefit of tax agents, their clients and HMRC as set out at HM Revenue & Customs: Working Together – an overview. We will not lose sight of this valuable function, which enables agents and professional bodies to alert HMRC at an early stage to glitches in the tax system and make suggestions to improve services for its customers.
  • We’ll be looking across the piece at how issues are reported to HMRC and how, in turn, updates on progress are reported back to agents, to see if we can identify more effective and quicker ways of managing issues through the use of digital tools.
  • We are very keen to hear agents’ views on how the right digital support for agents should be developed. We plan to use the next meeting of the Agents/HMRC Virtual Communications Group on 20th August to begin a conversation about this with the representative bodies and we will also be discussing our proposals with agents in local Working Together groups.