Tax Assistant is a complete software package for tax compliance processing, designed to deal with the requirements of Self Assessment and the Electronic Lodgement Service.
Tax
Assistant operates on computers running the Windows operating system (98, NT,
2000 or XP), in either
a standalone or network environment.
This paper gives an outline of the modules making up the Tax Assistant package. If you wish to examine the software in depth, click here to request a free Tax Assistant Evaluation Kit.
| TaxBase | ||
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The Tax Assistant database management system, called TaxBase, provides many of the database facilities required by a tax accountant. The database format is compatible with Microsoft Access, so information stored in a TaxBase database will also be available to any application that can read a Microsoft Access database. |
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TaxBase has many of the most important features required by tax practitioners to build a complete, administrative database including: |
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Rapid access through the database records to obtain details for any selected client. |
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Tax related information for all clients |
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Personal details |
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| Full name, address, date of birth, telephone numbers, spouse and children’s’ names and dates of birth sex, marital status. | ||
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Business details for up to four businesses |
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| Name, description, type, address, telephone numbers, commencement and cessation dates, year-end date, net relevant earnings. | ||
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Employment details for up to four employments |
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| Occupation, employer’s name, address and PAYE reference, start date, finish date, net relevant earnings. | ||
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Pension contributions |
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| Details of clients' retirement annuity payments (RAP), personal pension contributions (PPC) and free standing additional voluntary contributions (FSAVC). | ||
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Assets and liabilities |
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| A record of the major capital assets and liabilities held by each client. | ||
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Administration |
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| An internal tax administration record for each client including client reference, National Insurance number and taxpayer reference. Also, the tax inspector’s name and the name, address, telephone number and fax number of the client’s tax office. A record of the partner, manager and assistant responsible for each client. | ||
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Diary for a period of four tax years |
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| A list of "milestone" dates to monitor the progress of each client's tax affairs throughout the year. You can produce filtered lists of clients satisfying defined criteria such as “all clients whose tax returns have not yet been lodged”. You can also produce management reports relating to the filtered lists. | ||
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User Defined |
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| A table of database fields for specifying your own information. This table can be customised to your own requirements with a user definable title. | ||
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Register of tax office addresses |
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| A complete register of the addresses of all UK Tax Offices, which may be edited by the user. The stored information includes the tax office number, name, address, telephone number and fax number. | ||
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Dividends database |
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| A database of about 200 leading company dividends. This database is mainly intended for use with the Tax Return modules. It enables dividends to be automatically calculated within the dividends “notepad” in the Tax Return and Repayment Claim modules. The dividends database can also be edited by the user, so you can make additions to the supplied set. | ||
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Tools |
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Client Lists |
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| These may be categorised with user defined "indicators". | ||
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Client Records |
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| Printout of the full database record, or selected sections of it, can be produced for any selected group of clients. | ||
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Mail merge data |
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| Generation of a mail merge data file for clients or tax offices for use in conjunction with any standard word processor. | ||
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Client or Tax Office letter |
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| Automatic generation of a letter heading for any client or tax office for attachment to letters. The heading may be copied to the Windows Clipboard for pasting into any other Windows application. | ||
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Standard letters |
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| A set of standard letters is available which can be used in conjunction with the letter heading function to rapidly produce standard letters. The standard letters may be edited by the user. | ||
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Address labels for clients and tax offices |
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| Printed on standard Avery laser label sheets | ||
| Form 64-8 | ||
| A form 64-8 can be produced using the information from any record in the client database. | ||
| Tax Returns | ||
| Tax Assistant includes Tax Return modules for all self-assessment years since its introduction in 1997. The package contains programs for Tax Returns, Partnership Tax Returns, and Trust and Estate Tax Returns. Each of these programs can be used either in conjunction with TaxBase or as a stand-alone module for producing Inland Revenue approved tax returns, supplements and supporting schedules. The programs include implementations of the Inland Revenue’s specification for the self-assessment tax calculations. | ||
| The Tax Return modules handle all supplementary pages, including Lloyd’s Underwriters and Ministers of Religion. The tax computations deal with all normal circumstances plus more unusual cases, such as those involving capital gains, lump sum payments, top-slicing relief and non-resident exemptions. | ||
| The Electronic Lodgement Service (ELS) is supported through a data translation module called Tax Courier. This program transports tax return information to and from the Inland Revenue’s Tax Exchange Module (TEM), thus providing a fully integrated ELS solution. | ||
| The Filing By Internet (FBI) system is supported through a data communications module called FBI Courier, which transmits tax return information to and from the Inland Revenue via the Internet, thus providing a completely integrated Internet filing solution. | ||
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Full client filing system |
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| File functions are included for creating new tax return files or creating tax return files based on those from the previous year. Other file functions include Open, Save, Close, Rename, Delete and Backup. | ||
| Transferring client data from the previous year means that all data which does not, or is unlikely to change from year to year (e.g. address, occupation, shares held) is instantly copied from the previous year's Tax Return thus saving a large amount of data entry from year to year. | ||
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Import |
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| Client information stored in a TaxBase database, such as address, employment information, business details and pension contributions can be imported into the Tax Return with a few clicks of the mouse. Data can be imported into the Employment supplement in an individual Tax Return from the client data produced using the Tax Assistant P11D module, and a partner's allocation from the statement in a Partnership Tax Return can be imported into the Partnership supplement in an individual Tax Return. There is also a facility to import accounts data from accounts production software, spreadsheets and word processing documents to a Self-employment supplement in an individual Tax Return, the trading section in the Partnership Tax Return, or a trade supplement in the Trust and Estate Tax Return. The Trust and Estate Tax Return program also includes a facility to import trust accounts data into the savings and investment sections of the Trust and Estate Tax Return. The import functions are available using an industry standard format. | ||
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On-screen display of tax forms |
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| Each Tax Return module includes a full-colour on-screen display of the Tax Return and Supplements. Rapid navigation around the Tax Return is possible using a variety of methods such as toolbar, scroll bars and page selection tabs. Information can be entered directly into the tax form boxes as it would be on a paper return. | ||
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Notepads with "point and click" icons |
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| Sprinkled around the on-screen Tax Return you will find many "notepad" icons. Simply "point and click" on any of these to reveal one of Tax Assistant's most powerful features, the Notepads. Each notepad icon is context sensitive. When you click on an icon a notepad page appears, which applies to that section of the Tax Return. There are notepad pages for all sections of the Tax Return where background data is used to derive the information that appears on the tax forms. Total amounts are automatically calculated on the notepads and copied to the appropriate tax form boxes when you click on the OK button on a notepad. All information entered on the notepads can be printed out in the form of supporting schedules to accompany a tax return. | ||
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Calculators for special functions |
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| Several specialised on-screen "calculators" are incorporated into the Tax Return programs. These include: | ||
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Capital allowances calculator |
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| Calculates capital allowances and balancing charges, based on initial value brought forward, writing-down factors, proportion of private use, additions and sales. This calculator also deals with first-year allowances. | ||
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Business tax adjustments calculator |
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| Calculates basis period, adjustment to taxable profits, overlap relief and overlap profit carried forward. The calculations take account of multiple accounting periods, business commencement and cessation dates, changes of accounting date and overlap profits brought forward. | ||
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Car benefits calculator |
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| Calculates benefits arising from the use of company cars and fuel for private use. The calculations include changes of car, capital and running cost contributions, and apportionment for partial year use. | ||
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Capital gains calculator |
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| Calculates gains arising from the disposal of capital assets, including indexation allowance and taper relief. The calculations also include automatic allocation of losses against gains for the current year’s capital losses, income losses and losses brought forward from earlier years. | ||
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Tax Calculation for Self
Assessment |
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| Tax calculations, following the Inland Revenue documents
SA151 for Tax Returns and SA951 for Trust and Estate Tax Returns, are performed
automatically by the programs, based on the entries you make on the tax return
and supplementary forms. You can print a summary of the tax calculation, based
on the Inland Revenue document SA302, and a detailed calculation, based on
document SA151 or SA951 that shows how
each section of the calculation has been performed. The tax calculation handles
all variations of income, deductions and allowances, including special
circumstances such as lump sum payments, chargeable event gains, top slicing
relief, non-residents exemption and student loan repayments. |
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Printed reports of Tax Returns, supporting schedules
and tax calculation summary and details. |
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| Tax Assistant produces high quality printed reports on laser printers. The substitute Tax Return and supplementary pages produced by Tax Assistant is approved by the Inland Revenue for submission in place of the official Tax Return forms. Simple changes to configuration parameters enable minor scaling of the page size to take account of variations in laser printers. The Reports screen offers complete flexibility in selection of pages to print. All schedule printouts have headers and footers that identify the taxpayer, the firm’s name and the date. | ||
| There are also facilities for printing the contents of a client’s Tax Return in summary form and for producing an ‘information request’ schedule to obtain data from a client for the following year’s Tax Return. | ||
| Tax Return printouts can also be produced as Microsoft Word documents, enabling Tax Returns and supporting documents to be sent to your clients by email. This can yield significant savings on time, and large savings on printing and postage. | ||
| ELS |
| The Tax Return, Partnership Tax Return and Trust Tax Return programs have a facility to use the Electronic Lodgement Service (ELS). The Inland Revenue has approved Tax Assistant for submission of self-assessment Tax Returns, Partnership Tax Returns, and Trust and Estate Tax Returns by ELS. |
| The ELS infrastructure, called DELTA, has been designed specifically with networks in mind. It provides Tax Assistant users with a “seamless” interface to ELS. There is a complete logging system to record the progress of each electronically lodged tax return and provide management reports relating to all tax returns. |
| Access to ELS is via the Inland Revenue’s Tax Exchange Module (TEM) and a data translation program called Tax Courier, which provides the interface between Tax Assistant and the TEM. The three modules, Tax Assistant, the Tax Courier and the Tax Exchange together form the DELTA system. |
| In a network environment, Tax Courier and TEM are installed on one computer, which is accessible as an ELS Server to all computers running Tax Assistant (i.e. Tax Assistant workstations). Tax Courier collects tax returns from all Tax Assistant workstations and delivers them to Tax Exchange. Tax form responses and financial statements from the Inland Revenue are generated by Tax Exchange. Tax Courier collects these messages and distributes them to the appropriate Tax Assistant workstations where they can be displayed and printed. |
| With the DELTA system, management of the ELS process is the responsibility of the designated ELS administrator within your organisation and is completely transparent to Tax Assistant users. Having completed a tax return, a Tax Assistant user simply clicks on the “Lodge” button to lodge the return electronically. At a later stage he or she can click on one of the report “view” buttons to examine and print Inland Revenue responses and financial statements relating to that return. The system completely detaches a Tax Assistant user from the complexities of ELS. |
| FBI |
| The Tax Return programs have a facility to use the Filing By Internet (FBI) system. The Tax Assistant package has obtained Inland Revenue recognition, having satisfied the testing requirements for filing tax returns via the Internet. |
| The FBI infrastructure within the Tax Assistant system has been designed specifically with networks in mind. It provides Tax Assistant users with a “seamless” interface to FBI. There is a complete logging system to record the progress of each tax return filed over the Internet and provide management reports relating to all tax returns. |
| Access to FBI via a data communications program called FBI Courier, which provides the interface between Tax Assistant and the Internet. The Tax Return and FBI Courier together form the Tax Assistant FBI system. |
| In a network environment, FBI Courier is installed on one computer, which has a connection to the Internet and is accessible as an FBI Server to all computers running Tax Assistant (i.e. Tax Assistant workstations). FBI Courier collects tax returns from all Tax Assistant workstations and transmits them via the Internet to the Inland Revenue's computer system. Responses from the Inland Revenue are received by FBI Courier and distributed to the appropriate Tax Assistant workstations where they can be displayed and printed. |
| With the FBI system, management of the FBI process is the responsibility of the designated FBI administrator within your organisation and is completely transparent to Tax Assistant users. Having completed a tax return, a Tax Assistant user simply clicks on the “Lodge” button to lodge the return electronically. At a later stage he or she can click on one of the report “view” buttons to examine and print Inland Revenue responses relating to that return. The system completely detaches a Tax Assistant user from the complexities of FBI. |
| Repayment Claim |
| In appearance and operation the Repayment Claim program is similar to the
Tax Return programs. This module is based on the Inland Revenue R40 form, Claim
for Repayment of Income Tax. |
| The Repayment Claim program uses similar client files to those used with the Tax Return programs and all the filing features that apply to the Tax Returns can be used in an identical way in the Repayment Claim, including the capability to import client and tax office data from a TaxBase database. |
| The printed R40 substitute has Inland Revenue approval. The printed schedules and tax calculation summary have the same format as those in the Tax Return programs. |
| The tax calculation is performed in the same manner for the Repayment Claim as in the Tax Return programs, using the Inland Revenue tax calculation specification as defined in document SA151. |
| Pensions Planner |
| The Pension Planner module provides the means of calculating tax relief arising from retirement annuity payments and personal pension contributions. Like the other modules in the Tax Assistant suite, ease of use has been a major consideration in the design of the Pensions Planner module. |
| This module contains a complete filing system similar to that in the Tax Return and Repayment Claim modules. |
| The computations, based a client’s net relevant earnings and age, cover the tax years from 1988-89 to 2009-2010. Client details, including net relevant earnings and pension contributions, may be imported from a TaxBase database or keyed in directly. |
| After you have entered the data, just press the Compute button to
calculate the amount of unused relief for each year, the unused relief brought
forward from previous years, any unused relief that remains to be carried
forward to future years, and any relief from earlier years that is utilised in
the current year. The computations take account of maximum relievable amounts
for each year depending on the taxpayer's age, and the relationships between
retirement annuity relief and personal pensions relief. A complete
breakdown is also given of the utilisation of unused relief in earlier years,
going back as far as 1982-83. For the years from 2001-02 onwards the calculation automatically selects the basis year that is most beneficial to the taxpayer. The program implements the new rules introduced from 2001-02 in compliance with Inland Revenue document IR76. |
| The program produces a three-page report, showing complete details of relief available, used and unused in each year and its utilisation, if applicable, in future years. The report may be printed directly or saved as a PDF file, which can be viewed and printed using PDF reader software or attached to an email message. |
| Company Tax Return |
| To complete the suite of Tax Assistant programs, there is a Company Tax Return module. As with the other Tax Assistant modules, this program includes on-screen displays of the CT600 form and supplements and you can produce Inland Revenue approved substitute printouts of the forms. |
| The Company Tax Return automatically computes corporation tax liability, using the start and end dates of the accounting period and the taxable profits. It also computes any applicable marginal starting rate or small companies’ relief, based on the accounting period, the amounts of profit and franked investment income, and the number of associated companies. |
| Like the other Tax Return modules, the Company Tax Return includes a comprehensive set of "notepads" and "calculators" that can be used to enter the background information for the return and produce supporting schedules to accompany the return. |
| The CT600, its supplements, and supporting schedules can be printed directly from the program or saved as a PDF file, which can be viewed and printed using PDF reader software or attached to an email message. |