With the deadline for filling in your tax return on the horizon, many self-employed people and small businesses will scrambling to make sure all their paper work is in order. The last minute rush to do self-assessment may soon be a thing of the past, however.

Chancellor George Osbourne has recently announced plans to introduce digital tax accounts, which will allow users to manage their taxes throughout the year. The changes are scheduled to be completed by the end of the next parliament. Plans include allowing businesses to settle their tax bill as the year progresses and to change tax codes online, cutting out on form filling.

This all sounds like great news, but big changes of this type are notoriously difficult to get running smoothly across the board on such a huge scale. While the stated reason for the changes is to help small businesses and the self-employed, a more cynical view would be that it’s a bid to get the taxpayer of do the work of HMRC, which is facing budget cuts.