Skip to main content
Hello! We use cookies to improve your experience by providing insights into how the site is being used. Find out more.

To: Philip Hammond

Do not force the self employed to submit quarterly tax returns!!

Scrap the plan to move to increase self-employed people returns to 4 times per year.
Retain the yearly submission process.
Ensure that treasury decisions don't suffocate small trading and self employed industry.

Why is this important?

Self employed people generally work over 50 hours a week - many work considerably longer hours. They get no job security or holiday allowance. Their salary is not paid if they are sick and yet they contribute hugely to the nation's wealth.
Many self employed people manage all aspects of their business from the PR, to office admin, to ensuring that they keep up to date with H&S, keeping accounts etc as well as delivering the core nature of their business.
A three monthly submission process of tax return would create an unacceptably huge administrative burden on self employed people.
It would stifle our collective ability to deliver our core business.
It would discourage entrepreneurialism.
In terms of the arts and third sector self-employment - it would add further administrative duress to an already ailing and underfunded landscape.

Updates

2017-03-18 09:01:45 +0000

This is a statement from a representative of Musicians Union who supports this petition:

"Before Christmas I met with the Equity finance official who was lobbying hard, with our support, to greatly increase the threshold at which the self-employed would be forced to make quarterly tax returns. This week I heard, unofficially, that the threshold is likely to be raised from the current proposal of 8k to 20k. This is still not enough for our liking as it will affect far too many of our members.

Again, unofficially, I understand that HMRC are not going to provide their own software to make this easier, but instead are trying to push this app https://itunes.apple.com/gb/app/1tap-receipts-hmrc-self-assessment-tax-accounting/id1092491157?mt=8 as a way of smoothing the process."

As the MU rep says - the threshold is still way too low. And it is interesting that the Government assume we are all able to access apps and process information through them easily.

2017-03-14 22:54:44 +0000

10,000 signatures reached

2017-03-14 12:38:53 +0000

5,000 signatures reached

2017-03-13 17:50:20 +0000

1,000 signatures reached

2017-03-13 14:03:43 +0000

500 signatures reached

2017-03-13 08:50:34 +0000

100 signatures reached

2017-03-12 23:36:24 +0000

50 signatures reached

2017-03-12 16:41:36 +0000

25 signatures reached

2017-03-10 18:39:42 +0000

10 signatures reached