The Guernsey Revenue Service have enhanced their online tax return portal significantly over the past few years.

It comes as part of the pledge in the Island’s technological infrastructure by the States of Guernsey of £200 million over the next decade.

Here we identify 5 of the top reasons we think you should think about moving to an online submission:

1. Submit online and on time. Nobody wants to pay excess tax. Although submitting online won’t save you tax, it is more likely to ensure you submit on time, and that means you are less likely to incur penalties and surcharges for late submissions.

2. Future proof your tax return. The States of Guernsey is investing heavily in technology. Plans include automatic self-assessment (similar to the UK) and the natural progression will be a requirement to submit online. By doing it now, it means you will be ahead of the curve.

3. Get assessed sooner. Although there are no statistics, it is readily known that online submissions are processed quicker than paper returns. In general, this is because of the technological advances the States of Guernsey have been working towards. It is easy to predict that over the next few years, the processing time of online returns is going to dramatically reduce.

4. It’s not as hard as you think. Once you’ve got access, following the online form is really quite simple. You can pause, save and return to the form whenever you want, and once submitted you can keep a record of return digitally. This is a great way to help you reconcile any assessments you receive from the Revenue Service without having to have copied your paper submission.

5. The future’s nearly here. At Lince Salisbury we see the pace of technological change, including great accounting applications like Receipt Bank and Quickbooks online. One day in the future (and not that distant future) we see a Guernsey Tax Return that links to other source documents. Where you can add in your income automatically through systems talking to one another.

Top Tip: Sign on to the gov.gg website to see if you have an option to submit online. If you choose to submit a paper return, it does no harm to activate your account. 

At Lince Salisbury over 95% of the personal tax returns we submit are through the online portal. We can help you get set up and talk through your last paper return as if you were going to submit online. 

Add your name to our database to be the first to know about our next Go Online Tax Lunch.