Almost half of SMEs 'lost money' in tax self-assessment
Almost half of small to medium enterprises lost money during the tax self-assessment process in the last year, a new survey released on Tuesday suggested, at a time when the Government was pushing through its ‘Making Tax Digital’ initiative.
The survey of 1,000 UK SMEs, commissioned by cloud accountancy software company Pandle, reported that while those businesses felt “well-informed” on the tax system changes, 49.23% of them lost money in the submission process.
On the concept of “Making Tax Digital” from HMRC, just under two thirds - 62.64% - of respondents said they felt prepared for the change.
Almost 20% of those surveyed were unaware of the “Making Tax Digital” changes, and nearly half - 48.3% - were apparently concerned that the process could become too cumbersome.
A significant minority - 13% - were worried they weren’t “tech savvy” enough to navigate the digital tax system.
In the Spring Budget, the Government did give SMEs some respire, saying it would allow 3.1 million smaller businesses until 2019 to comply with digital record-keeping and quarterly reporting requirements.
“It’s great that HMRC is allowing SMEs extra time to adjust to the system,” said Pandle CEO Lee Murphy.
“While there’s a lot of information available on the current system, these things are never as easy in practice as in theory.”
Murphy said it would be increasingly important for companies to understand the self assessment by 2019 when quarterly reporting is required.
“We conducted this survey for insight on how we could best contribute to SMEs who are struggling with the current tax system.”