Self Assessment Notes for Software Developers

April 2008

The Self Assessment (SA) Notes for Software Developers is a quarterly publication giving forthcoming information to assist software developers.

Contents

IT on the horizon

1.1 Capital Gains and foreign pages

We are currently making changes to our SA online products for 2007-08. These enhancements include adding Capital Gains and Foreign pages to our application. We are providing these pages in response to feedback from our unrepresented customers to help them move to filing online. This is in line with our online filing strategy to target our free filing service at customers who currently complete an SA Return themselves. We plan to have these additional pages available from summer 2008.

Automatic pre-populating of third party SA software

From April 2008 HMRC’s online filing product will pre-populate the following fields:

  • Name
  • Address
  • Unique Tax Reference number (UTR)
  • National Insurance number (NINO)
  • Email address
  • Box Cal 7 – tax underpaid for previous years that’s included in current year’s code number
  • Box Cal 8 – tax underpaid for current year that’s included in subsequent year’s code number
  • Date of birth
  • Local Authority details for customers registered blind
  • Student Loan Indicator
  • National Insurance Benefit – actual details
  • Customers who file online using third party products will be able to access the same data by using HMRC’s SA portal ‘View Account’ page. They will have to manually key the date into their own software.

We plan to make the pre-population of third party products automatic by April 2009, with a test service available from October 2008. Software developers are actively involved in working with us to determine the requirements; a representative group attended a workshop on 17 March.

Index to recent SA documents

Please see the 2008 Internet Service Technical Pack for Software Developers

Events and meetings

Date and event

15 May 08 - Tripartite Working Group meeting
Date to be advised (possibly May 08) - Delegated Rights Management (DRM) workshop
30 June 08 (provisional date) - Collaborative Assembly of Software Developers and HMRC (CASH) meeting

Statistical information

Percentage of SA Returns filed online at:

30 March 08 43.6 per cent
30 March 07 33.4 per cent

2007-08 Cumulative number of returns filed online to 30 March 08 using:

Third party online products 2,734,692
HMRC online filing product 1,022,940

General interest

HMRC’s online filing strategy – broad overview

Online filing is set to increase as:

  • customers move to online communications
  • we implement the mandatory legislative changes of the Carter recommendations

We believe that certain ‘entry level’ customers should be able to file online without having to pay for software. They need software and online support that is free. These customers are unrepresented individuals, small businesses and employers, and agents who file for a small number of clients where buying software is not commercially justified. To meet their needs we will move to a position where we will provide software for these ‘entry level’ customer segments across various products. We will agree the precise definition of the segments with the external stakeholders. But broadly we will target our free filing service at unrepresented:

  • individuals who currently complete their own SA Return
  • CT and VAT ‘micro’ businesses with a low turnover
  • PAYE ‘micro’ employers with a small number of employees

As part of our online filing strategy we will review our position on this as the industry rises to the challenge of providing free software for the ‘entry level’ customer segments.

We recognise that there is already an overlap between these ‘entry level’ customers and those that the industry serves. We aim to mitigate this whilst we make sure that we meet the needs of our customers.

We hosted an ‘Accelerated Solutions Environment’ (ASE) workshop on 7 March 2008 for software developers and other stakeholders. The aim of the workshop was to launch our Online Filing Strategy for detailed consideration. Steve Lamey, our Chief Operating Officer, is sponsoring the review of our Strategy. We also have a Review Steering Group (made up of members of the Collaborative Assembly of Software Developers and HMRC, the Employment Consultation Forum and Working Together) chaired by John Harrison our Head of Online Services. We are currently evaluating the outputs of the ASE workshop and taking them into wider consultation.

Technical pack and Local Test Service (LTS)

We updated the technical pack and LTS on 25 March with version 1.4 of the Rules and Management Infrastructure (RIM) artefacts. You can download the LTS from our SA technical pack page of our Internet site.

The new version of the artefacts introduces fixes for special cases 14 (FSE98/99) and 26 (ASE9), and a correction to include the previously reported fix for FSE71.

We will incorporate these into the live release on 6 April 2008 and into the next available Third Party Validation Service (TPVS) release in summer 2008.

Specials and exclusions

With the introduction of the 31 October paper filing date, cases added to the Specials and Exclusions document after 5 April take on a greater significance.

Customers cannot file their SA Return online for cases shown on the Exclusions list and there is no work-around. If applicable, customers should show us that one or more of the reasons shown on the Exclusions list stopped them from filing their SA Return online. In these cases we will accept an appeal against any penalty for the late submission of a paper return, between 31 October and 31 January, on the basis that they had a ‘reasonable excuse’.

The Specials list gives instances where software developers will probably have made adjustments to their software. If they have not made adjustments customers should try to use the advertised work-around. However, where a customer has difficulties filing online due to one or more of the reasons shown on the Specials list we will consider appeals for ‘reasonable excuse’ on a case by case basis.

Following our discussions with agents and their representative bodies, we will publish the Specials and Exclusions list on both the individuals and agents sections of our website from 9 April 2008.

Feedback

The aim of these SA Notes is to give you, as software developers, some additional information that will help you to develop your products. To help us to make sure that this publication meets your needs please let us have your feedback.

Contacts for specific issues

If you have any feedback, questions or issues please:

Email: SDS Team
or
Phone: 01274 534666 this line is open Mon - Fri 09:00 to 17:00