Abolish Late Filing Penalties In The UK Says ATT President
President of the UK Association of Taxation
Technicians, Trevor Johnson, has called for the Inland Revenue to abolish
the £100 penalty for late filing of self-assessment returns. He
urged the Revenue department to be bold by abolishing the fixed filing
penalty and instead to bring in a system of positive incentives such as
£150 reduction in tax if the return is filed before 30 June, £100
if before 30 September and £50 if before 31 December. To support his suggestion, Mr Johnson pointed
to a recent National Audit Office report into self assessment which suggested
that there was no evidence that such penalties achieved the professed
objective of 'encouraging' the submission of returns on time. In fact,
said Mr Johnson, the Revenue's own figures shown that the number of overdue
returns at each 31st January was increasing each year. Mr Johnson asked: 'If, as it seems from these
figures, the penalties were not effective in encouraging people to file
returns by 31st January, what did they achieve?' The immediate result
he said was likely to have been between 15 million and 20 million pieces
of paper in circulation in the two and a half year period covered by the
report. 'However, the lasting achievement was confrontation, frustration
and resentment. In fact the complete opposite to what the Revenue is trying
to achieve; the image of an 'enabling' organisation,' he added. .
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