That has never changed and never will.
I recall being told that computers had developed so far and so fast that development will now plateau. Then we installed Windows 95. It carries on and will always carry on for as long as people want to do things better or faster than they can just now. AI is appearing and will develop much further. Its applications will permeate our lives and will become as natural as mobile phones and spreadsheets.
The tax system is also evolving. I know that rates have gone up quite quickly in the last few years, but that is not what I am referring to here. MTD is just around the corner. It’s now less than a year away, and it is going to have a fundamental impact on the way you report your self-employment and rental income. It is going to have an even greater impact on the way in which we work, as we move to support all of you who don’t want to make the quarterly returns yourself. But that’s what we are here for, isn’t it?
HMRC seem to think that everything is on course for the new systems to go live next April. They are testing this year using volunteers, both taxpayers and accountants. There will inevitably be some gremlins in the system, but after the first year or two, we should all be using the new systems and be as familiar as we are now with self-assessment.
Having said that, I still have people asking me why they have to pay a year’s tax in advance, that is, the payments on account. That system has been with us now for nearly 30 years, so you would think that they would have got the hang of it by now. But no!
Apparently, this is the 20th anniversary of the launch of YouTube. It must be about 30 years since I got my first mobile phone, a Panasonic with a small green on black screen, and all it did was make phone calls, assuming I could get a signal, which was very patchy at the time. I had a Chelsea Tractor at the time, one of the first Land Rover Discoveries, fitted with Bull Bars. One of the least things that I now do with my mobile phone is make phone calls. I do so much more on that device than I could ever have dreamt of doing when I got that first Panasonic,
And what would we do without spreadsheets? I started on Super Calc. We got a single floppy with the program, but no manual. Yes, it was a copy from someone else. Then we moved on to Excel and paid for it. Spreadsheets are the lifeblood of our work. I spend part of every day on one spreadsheet or another and sometimes all day on a spreadsheet, if I am preparing financial projections for someone.
Our offices have been paperless for about 10 years, and so we use spreadsheets for our working papers. All incoming correspondence is scanned and so we are not passing bits of paper around. We recently had a big clear-out of old paper files. That’s a lot of shredding. But we no longer need them as everything is stored on our server, into which all of our staff from the 5 offices log in every day.
Mind you, if the internet goes down, we cannot work. Without our computers, we are stuck. When someone cut a cable in the North of Scotland a few years ago, we just had to send everyone home, because there was nothing we could do. Our office connections to the server did not work.
So, where do you think we will go from here? HMRC’s systems will continue to evolve. They are already talking about pre-populating your tax return with the information that they gather as a matter of course through PAYE, and from banks and others. Will we be out of a job? I doubt it.
One of the changes that has accompanied the introduction of computers is that we do not need as many staff. We currently have around 40 staff. If we did not have computers, that number would be at least 90 and possibly over 100. Will this trend continue? I think that it will. Many more of our systems will become automated, continuing the trend started many years ago. Will we reduce the number of our staff? No, but we will do more with the staff that we have. Our work and our systems will continue to evolve. Our practice will continue to grow, supporting more small businesses, but staff numbers will not go up at the same rate.
So, what will our business look like in 10 years’ time? If I ask myself the same question as I ask clients and potential clients, what would be the answer? So, what’s the question? On this day in 10 years’ time, how old will you be? When you leave the house that morning, where are you going? If it is to work, what does that look like? How many people do you employ? What’s your turnover?
The answer to these questions tells you where you are going. We can help you get there.
Alan E Long
The Long Partnership
07770 738770
