Consulting on HMRC digital improvements project
Confluence Tax has been invited to take part in the HMRC research project into digital improvements to its SEIS, EIS and venture capital trust schemes – a great opportunity for us to have our say on the things that bug both us and our biotech and tech clients about the tax system!
This stage of the project involves HMRC and partners obtaining feedback from those companies using the schemes, of which we are one. We were asked what we would like to avoid in the future, and our feedback was as follows:
- The delays caused by paper submissions and data entered by hand. Nothing annoys an investor more than having to wait for their tax certificate and then having their name and address spelt incorrectly.
- The need to prepare special tables and re-cut existing data into new formats to prove that tax conditions are met. Wouldn’t life be easier if the shareholder cap table could be submitted, with the data extracted from there?
Our hope is that the full opportunity to digitise the service will be grasped, as per the aims of the Making Tax Digital initiative. This would involve intelligent automated analysis of applications made by a company resulting in the pre-population of an investor’s personal returns and tax accounts with the relevant details.
This would cut out the paperwork and middleman aspects of the process, which is where the delays and errors arise. Our view is that, as a result, the reliefs would be more cost-effective to operate for companies, investors and HMRC alike.
If you’d like to find out more about how Confluence Tax helps biotech businesses view our What we do video.
