VAT Rate Change

Now that most companies have put the final implamentation of the new UK VAT rate in place (rather than the emergancy systems that were in use straight after the UK VAT rate change came into affect), we can now look forward to doing it all over again - in 11 months time!! The new UK VAT rate of 15% is only in place until the 31st of December 2009, which means, in less than a year, all the companies that spent thousands of pounds implamenting the VAT rate change last December have to go through it all again. Hopefully however, we have learnt some lessons from this VAT rate change that future businesses and software developers will take into consideration. Lesson 1: Nothing Is Permenant Just as the UK VAT cut was annouced less than a week before it took affect, many other things could happen the same way. Software developers have often had an issues with lazyness, and just assume things will always be the way they are now. Hopefully now developers will bear this VAT rate change in mind, and make systems more flexable to changes in 'default' values in future. Lesson 2: Old Systems Never Die Out One of the big issues many people had when the VAT rate change came into effect was the fact their old financial system was no longer supported. They may have had letters offering upgrades in the past, but if something works, why spend £300 on the next version, with a shed load of features you will never use? Many users of such software found it was expensive and almost impossible to find someone who could update their old system when the UK VAT rate change came into effect. Lesson 3: Expect Everything Very few people saw this coming, so as a result, it was a mad scramble when the UK VAT cut was annouced. Very few companies had plans in place of such an event, and so many companies just couldn't be ready in time. In business, we have to expect everything, and assume that the worst will happen, and plan for it - know who to contact to get software updated, have alternate systems in place in case a system goes down, or can't be used for any reason. Its safe to say we have learnt many lessons from the UK VAT rate change - there are many things to consider, and hopefully we will not see the same issue when the UK VAT rate changes again at the end of the year.