As we all now finish work for the festive season, I, like many others who work in practice, have the grim prospect of the self-assessment season upon us as well as the December year end audits to plan.  Many accountants will be working over Christmas and last year, HMRC confirmed that 620 people in the UK filed their tax returns on Christmas Day.  This comprised 224 accountants and 396 individual taxpayers.

There is one thing for sure, I certainly won’t be filing any returns on Christmas Day!

It has been a busy and difficult year for business and particularly on AccountancyStudents, we still see a rising number of threads posted by students and affiliates alike who are struggling to secure work with 1 vacancy in a particular workplace attracting so many applicants that competition is extremely stiff.

However, as 2009 ends we can only hope that 2010 will bring a lot more hope and positvity amongst the profession and its students with hopefully many more success stories being posted on here in 2010. On that note we will end by wishing all of our members and guests a very happy Christmas and a prosperous New Year and we look forward to seeing you all again in 2010.

Take care.

Steve Collings and Mark Ellis