Why January is NOT Our Busiest Month

Why January is NOT Our Busiest Month Purple Lime

The clock may have only struck midnight but a new year can often bring with it a sick feeling in the pit of your stomach – and it’s not due to an excess of Christmas chocolates.

With the January 31st deadline for tax submission looming any business, small or large, could be forgiven for feeling under pressure. Indeed, statistics from 2017/18 found 2,600 businesses chose to submit their tax returns on Christmas Day, rising to 8,465 on Boxing Day. Online filing has now outstripped paper forms with 88% of all tax returns filled in online.

Who wants to spend the best days of Christmas filling in their tax returns? Do you? Or your team? Surely there has to be a better way?

What if January approaches and you’ve yet to complete yours? Or you’ve done it over the Christmas period and thought ‘never again’?

A sense of panic

Many accountants panic in the new year as they anticipate a flurry of business owners or their book-keepers to knock on their doors trying to avoid that automatic £100 fine.

Here at Purple Lime we’re happy to say there’s a less stressful atmosphere in the air. We’ve worked with our clients to ensure the January blues are kept at bay. We have the time to also help those who don’t want to endure that stress any more.

With 50% of all tax returns filed through accountants, January can often be the busiest month for a typical firm. It can also be the month where you need us the most. Therefore a company like ours is perfect to help you work in a more efficient and modern manner, using technology.

Even if your company is meticulous in its paperwork and bookkeeping, there are always questions about efficiencies, savings and expenses that you may need an answer for. And let’s face it, who wants to phone HMRC and hang on a call in a queue for hours on end?

That’s why, at Purple Lime, we take a more practical approach, our software ensures we receive continuous rolling updates throughout the year for clients so that we can monitor finances along the way and collate information with ease.

Thanks to our cloud accounting and tech savvy approach, many of our clients will have naturally already sent us the information we need. The days of us (or them) trawling through boxes of receipts are long gone.

Embracing technology

Technology may not replace people, and nor should it. However it can certainly deal with tax return stress and by embracing our software and apps all year round it ensures we are not your usual accountants.
While other firms may religiously bury their heads for a few weeks each year and not come up for air until February 1st, at Purple Lime we make small updates, ask for minimal information from our clients. This ensures we have everything we need and then tax returns can be submitted in advance of the deadline leaving our clients (and us) without stress.

It also means clients are now saved from thinking up a “dog ate my homework” type excuse to avoid a late fine. In fact, HMRC have reported that excuses are becoming much more widespread, and for all the wrong reasons.

Filing excuses

Delays in filing have previously been blamed on everything from “my business doesn’t really do anything” to the extreme, “I couldn’t file my return on time as my wife has been seeing aliens and won’t let me enter the house.” Yes that is a real excuse given to HMRC and it cuts no ice.

Angela MacDonald, HMRC Director General of Customer Services, said of the messages they get: “Each year we’re making it easier and more intuitive for our customers to complete their tax return, but each year we still come across some questionable excuses, whether that’s blaming a busy touring schedule or seeing aliens.”

So, if you are worried about filing your tax return just remember, we are not at Purple Lime. Thanks to cloud based accounting that includes live reporting and is completely paperless, we can keep an eye on your return all year round.

That means no fines, no running around trying to find an invoice number from a job you did almost a year ago and most of all, no stress.