Inland Revenue Set to Receive 200m in Fines

Wednesday, 23rd January 2008 - For Immediate Release

Research by a leading accounting-software company has revealed that nearly 20% of small business owners admit that they do not expect to get their tax return in on time this year with many admitting to being disorganised.

Nearly 20% of small business owners across the UK have admitted that they do not expect to get their tax return in on time this year and expect to pay fines to the Inland Revenue totalling around £200m.

Earlier in the month KashFlow asked just under 750 small business owners how they were getting on with their Self Assessment forms and found that the number saying that they would not get it in on time was up from 14% when they asked the same question last year.

48% of small business owners who said that they were not going to be able to get the forms in on time blamed it on not sending the information through to their accountant on time followed by 32% saying that they felt the forms were too confusing.

13% of respondents said that they were too busy to get the forms completed and 9% said they missed the Inland Revenue’s advertising campaigns and simply forgot they had to do it until prompted by the KashFlow research.

Duane Jackson is the Managing Director of KashFlow and speaking about the research he 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”.

He continued, “I think the 9% of business owners who said they totally forgot about their return must have been in hiding for the last few months as no matter where you turn, from radio, television and press adverts, Adam Hart Davies has been everywhere imploring people to get them in on time”

“In reality this means the Inland Revenue is going to have its coffers unnecessarily boosted by millions of pounds because somewhere along the line the tax assessment process is not reaching its target audience in the correct manner”.

KashFlow launched its flagship product, an online tool specifically designed to help owner-managers in small businesses manage their accounts, in mid 2005. Since that time it has quickly won a significant share of the valuable accounting software market along with launching a new direct to accountant division in late 2006.

In late 2007 venture-capital backed KashFlow won a Business Software Satisfaction Award, judged entirely by customer feedback, for the category of web-based accounting beating the likes of Sage and Netsuite.

Lord Young of Graffham, former Secretary of State for Trade and Industry and Chairman of Cable and Wireless was appointed to the role of Chairman of KashFlow in January 2008.

The KashFlow accounting package is securely hosted online, requires no installation and can be trialled for free by visiting http://www.kashflow.co.uk .

The site also displays examples of feedback from actual users.


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