One minute with Brian Palmer, policy adviser to the AAT.
What forthcoming tax issues are of most interest to you?
Of immediate interest to me is fathoming the tax consequences of Brexit. Ignoring some of the procedural aspects to be taken care of by the ‘Great’ Repeal Bill and the Customs Bill, as things currently stand no one really knows what the long term tax consequences of Brexit will be.
Looking further over the horizon, the issue most of interest would have to be the impact of artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning on the tax profession.
What’s your view of making tax digital?
HMRC’s ambition to harness recent technological developments to make the UK one of the world’s most digitally advanced tax administrations must be the right thing. But not at any cost. It is my view that slowing the pace of change, as recently announced by ministers, was exactly the right thing to do. There was a grave danger that if the government had continued with the previous implementation timetable, any closure of the tax gap would have been achieved at the expense of a loss of the hearts and minds of taxpayers who had previously been compliant.
What advice would you give to HMRC?
I believe that the department does a lot very well. Since 2000, it has had to contend with such things as the introduction of tax credits (not of its making), the merger of Revenue and Customs, bringing many of its services online in the wake of the Carter Report, and the roll-out of RTI. All of this has been achieved with a backdrop of year-on-year staff cuts for most of the last decade.
True, not everything has been a bed of roses; for instance, relations between HMRC and the tax profession hit an all-time low in 2006 and the then chairman, Paul Gray, had to fall on his sword after the data-loss scandal in 2007. Something like that could have broken many businesses.
My challenge to the department is that it must ensure that whatever online solution it might deliver in the future is as user-friendly as the banking app on my smartphone. After all, if the means of digital engagement is seamless, it will automatically become a taxpayer’s preferred method of engagement. Success could be measured by a palpable reduction in the volume of low value interactions with taxpayers.
How do you see the profession evolving over the next five to ten years?
In the short term, practitioners are going to have their hands full with the roll-out of MTD, and keeping abreast of the tax impacts of Brexit.
In the longer run, the challenge for all in tax is ‘how are we to adapt to the coming world of artificial intelligence?’ It is highly likely that for many, the old compliance drive reactive model will cease to exist. Low-level data input tasks will reduce as computers get more and more used to exchanging data without human intervention.
Advances in AI point to a future where taxpayers supported by technician-qualified individuals are asked context-sensitive questions by chatbots that reduce many, but by no means all, areas of technical tax to a series of questions posed by computer software driven by AI algorithms. To survive, the tax industry must move itself into the space of providing proactive services valued by the taxpayers in need.
You might not know this about me…
When I am not in the company of my immediate family, I am happiest when out on a long-distance walk with my two dogs (Toli and Lucy) close to my home in the wilds of the Dorset/Wiltshire border.
One minute with Brian Palmer, policy adviser to the AAT.
What forthcoming tax issues are of most interest to you?
Of immediate interest to me is fathoming the tax consequences of Brexit. Ignoring some of the procedural aspects to be taken care of by the ‘Great’ Repeal Bill and the Customs Bill, as things currently stand no one really knows what the long term tax consequences of Brexit will be.
Looking further over the horizon, the issue most of interest would have to be the impact of artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning on the tax profession.
What’s your view of making tax digital?
HMRC’s ambition to harness recent technological developments to make the UK one of the world’s most digitally advanced tax administrations must be the right thing. But not at any cost. It is my view that slowing the pace of change, as recently announced by ministers, was exactly the right thing to do. There was a grave danger that if the government had continued with the previous implementation timetable, any closure of the tax gap would have been achieved at the expense of a loss of the hearts and minds of taxpayers who had previously been compliant.
What advice would you give to HMRC?
I believe that the department does a lot very well. Since 2000, it has had to contend with such things as the introduction of tax credits (not of its making), the merger of Revenue and Customs, bringing many of its services online in the wake of the Carter Report, and the roll-out of RTI. All of this has been achieved with a backdrop of year-on-year staff cuts for most of the last decade.
True, not everything has been a bed of roses; for instance, relations between HMRC and the tax profession hit an all-time low in 2006 and the then chairman, Paul Gray, had to fall on his sword after the data-loss scandal in 2007. Something like that could have broken many businesses.
My challenge to the department is that it must ensure that whatever online solution it might deliver in the future is as user-friendly as the banking app on my smartphone. After all, if the means of digital engagement is seamless, it will automatically become a taxpayer’s preferred method of engagement. Success could be measured by a palpable reduction in the volume of low value interactions with taxpayers.
How do you see the profession evolving over the next five to ten years?
In the short term, practitioners are going to have their hands full with the roll-out of MTD, and keeping abreast of the tax impacts of Brexit.
In the longer run, the challenge for all in tax is ‘how are we to adapt to the coming world of artificial intelligence?’ It is highly likely that for many, the old compliance drive reactive model will cease to exist. Low-level data input tasks will reduce as computers get more and more used to exchanging data without human intervention.
Advances in AI point to a future where taxpayers supported by technician-qualified individuals are asked context-sensitive questions by chatbots that reduce many, but by no means all, areas of technical tax to a series of questions posed by computer software driven by AI algorithms. To survive, the tax industry must move itself into the space of providing proactive services valued by the taxpayers in need.
You might not know this about me…
When I am not in the company of my immediate family, I am happiest when out on a long-distance walk with my two dogs (Toli and Lucy) close to my home in the wilds of the Dorset/Wiltshire border.
