The Simplified Tax Return? Pah!

Tax returns are supposedly being simplified. And they are - for the taxman! Those of us who have to complete them find them just as bad as ever!

I almost fell off my chair this morning when I read that, according to the Chartered Institute of Taxation, a third of UK taxpayers find their tax returns difficult to complete. Considering that around 9 million taxpayers are required to fill in a tax return every year, I was amazed that as many as 6 million people found them easy to deal with! Frankly, I find them a nightmare!

Many people don't have to deal with tax returns. They have one job only, little or no income from other sources, and their employer deals with their tax liabilities under the Pay As You Earn system. Easy peasy.

But those who, among others, are self-employed; who hold shares or buy-to-let properties; who earn more than the norm; or who benefit from some other form of income outside of their bog-standard jobs find themselves faced every year with pages and pages of tax forms.

If you've never had to fill one in, let me tell you that it takes little more than 10-15 minutes to complete. But that's only after you have spent many hours collating all the information that the taxman asks for, adding things up and finding out exactly what you're allowed to offset against your expenditure. And then worrying that you've got it wrong or that you've missed something!

Of course, you could pay an accountant to do it for you but, even then, you've still got to gather up all the relevant bits of paperwork to hand over to them -- and for many people that's the route to take. But, in my experience, tax legislation changes so frequently that sometimes even the expert accountants don't seem to know what they're doing! (It's not their fault - civil servants who work for the tax office are often themselves confused so how are the rest of us supposed to get to grips with it!)

In recent years, Her Majesty's Revenue & Customs (formerly known as our dearly beloved Inland Revenue but now fondly known as HMRC) has tried to present us more simplified tax returns that ordinary folk like me can understand.

For example, my full-blown tax return a couple of years ago was accompanied by a guide on how to fill it in that was 35 pages long - and that didn't even include the 8 extra pages of notes that also needed to be considered! Still, I filled it in very carefully, was told that I was owed £114 (Hurrah!) and that I needn't bother to fill in a tax return the following year.

But then, last week, I was asked to 'review' my tax affairs for the last financial year just in case I should have filled in a tax return after all. The form they wanted me to fill in looked very simple - it consisted of one, two-sided, page with a mere four questions for me to answer. The accompanying guide to completing the form also consisted of just one, two-sided page.

But then, as I read the four questions and the guide to completing the boxes, I realised that I will have to spend just as much time digging out the required information, as I would have had to find to complete the usual multi-page tax return!

I'm beginning to wonder whether I should emigrate to a country where people don't pay tax at all. It would make life so much easier!