Keeping up to date with tax developments whilst between jobs

London, 5th November 2009

For job seekers in the tax arena, keeping up to date can seem quite daunting. Of course if you are currently in employment then your employer will (hopefully) have provided you with the tools with which you can keep up to date, but the issue for those currently between jobs is that many of the better resources are subscription based. Nevertheless there are still publicly available sources of information that can be used in order to keep oneself informed of new developments as and when they arise.

HMRC Resources

The HMRC website itself contains a wealth of information - see http://www.hmrc.gov.uk/thelibrary/. In addition, there is a "What's New" sectionhttp://www.hmrc.gov.uk/news/index.htm that indicates what has recently been added to the HMRC website and a "News Releases" sectionhttp://nds.coi.gov.uk/clientmicrosite/default.aspx?clientID=257.

What is an RSS Feed?

The News Release section has been set up as a "RSS feed" - an RSS feed is a special format used widely for distributing news and other web content. To pick up RSS feeds, you can use a RSS reader that you can set up to pick up news items from your chosen sources. Sharpreader is easy to use and is free (http://www.sharpreader.net/) For more information on RSS feeds see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RSS.

Budget material

HM Treasury and HMRC websites contain the raw press releases and other materials issued on Budget/PBR days. However, by the following morning you will be able to download the initial thoughts and analysis of the Big 4 from their websites.

Third Party Websites

There are also third party websites that carry news items, e.g.

ICAEW http://www.ion.icaew.com/TaxFaculty

CIOT's Technical Committee Newsdesk http://www.tax.org.uk/index.pl?section=28;n=3791

Accountancy Age http://www.accountancyage.com/tax/

AccountingWeb http://www.accountingweb.co.uk/topic/tax

TaxationWeb http://www.taxationweb.co.uk/tax-news/

RSS feeds can be set up for all of these sites.

The Big 4

Finally, the Big 4 also publish regular news updates, with users being able to subscribe by email to their weekly news emails. PwC in particular has an excellent offering - PwC Plus - for which registration is free.

Remember that keeping up to date is vital, especially during this difficult time when competition for positions is fierce. Good luck.

Andrew Ross is a Senior Tax Manager with Mazars. Within his previous role at PwC Andrew acted as tax technical advisor to the whole of the PwC tax practice and as knowledge management champion within the M&A Tax department.

Rob Stephenson is a Founder and Managing Partner of Maven Partners, a specialist taxation recruitment business. For more information please contact Rob on 0207 061 6421 or robstephenson@mavenpartners.co.uk