My wife and I have just filed and paid our self assessment tax returns this morning. Now, I know you have to earn something to be liable to pay something but it doesn't really ease the pain does it?
Anyway, just a wee reminder to those who need to do the same before the end of January.
Sometime back in the nineties I got a demand for nine pence, an underpayment after a HMRC recalculation . Obviously computer generated nonsense but so is the £100 fine for late payment so I paid up rather than get involved in some endless exchange of letters and phone calls. The bank staff were most amused when I presented a handful of coppers along with the payment slip.
Always do mine on paper and submit in good time. I was delighted to get a statement from them between christmas and new year telling me I was £1.46 in credit :-)
I've done all me figures and am ready to fill in the on=line form and send it whizzing over the ether....probably tomorrow.
While I was in the mood, I also worked out 14/15 figures up to date so I might just send them back on receipt of HMRCs next communication after April.
By the way, what's the accepted mileage I can set against income for use of me own motor. I can't remember what I claimed last time......I think it was 40 or 45 p.
Thanks Runf; started it now, but it usually takes a few evenings to complete. Hate it - don't understand a lot of it, so it's lucky Mrs F does. I'd managed to avoid them for a while but have had to do one the last couple of years due to claiming child benefit. Although I think I'm going to be paying it all back, for reasons I might have understood when Mrs F explained it but have since forgotten. And I'm sure changing employers during the year is going to further complicate things, Argh!
A typical working day for me is completing twenty or so of the blighters. Its only this busy in Jan. If the clients sent their info a bit earlier life would be much easier.
>> A typical working day for me is completing twenty or so of the blighters. Its
>> only this busy in Jan. If the clients sent their info a bit earlier life
>> would be much easier.
Twas ever so. If only debtors came to CAB before the bailiffs arrived.......
I've managed to avoid self-assessment entirely for the first quarter-century of my working life. However I'm about to become an "accidental" landlord so I'll soon find out what all the fuss is about.
>> A typical working day for me is completing twenty or so of the blighters. Its
>> only this busy in Jan. If the clients sent their info a bit earlier life
>> would be much easier.
+1
>>If the clients sent their info a bit earlier life would be much easier...
Yeah, I can see that, and indeed for accountants it must be like having money thrown at them and the earlier they can encourage that to happen the better for them I guess !
For those of us who are less excited by such things it feels much more like a turgid, thankless, mind numbingly boring task that usually results in costing money.
Now that it's online though, it's not that difficult. Our tax affairs aren't all that complicated although there are some bits and pieces we need to declare. Even so, the whole process probably only took 20 minutes for each one.
Kind of puts the £150 or so my accountants ( Turpin, Turpin and Biggs ) wanted to do it for me in perspective eh?
>> Now that it's online though, it's not that difficult. Our tax affairs aren't all that
>> complicated although there are some bits and pieces we need to declare. Even so, the
>> whole process probably only took 20 minutes for each one.
>> Kind of puts the £150 or so my accountants ( Turpin, Turpin and Biggs )
>> wanted to do it for me in perspective eh?
If you are of an ordered mind, and treat it as an ongoing thing when tax return time comes you have all records of your income to hand, and proof of your allowances and expenditure to hand and it is an easy task.
If you are of an unordered mind, and your income and expenditure records are contained within several morrisons shopping bags temporarily mislaid within the house or shed, its going to be a pain.
Even if you employ the erstwhile talents of Turpin Turpin and Biggs, they will still expect you to do the hard part and locate and sort the shopping bags into some kind of order.
>>
>>>>
>> If you are of an ordered mind, and treat it as an ongoing thing when
>> tax return time comes you have all records of your income to hand, and proof
>> of your allowances and expenditure to hand and it is an easy task.
>>
>>
>> If you are of an unordered mind, and your income and expenditure records are contained
>> within several morrisons shopping bags temporarily mislaid within the house or shed, its going to be a pain.
>>
>>
I now try to keep all records in order and where I can easily find them. This wasn't always the case, I used to be in the habit of stuffing fuel receipts into the ashtray and I had a terrible job one year when they'd formed into a solid paper block.
>> For those of us who are less excited by such things it feels much more
>> like a turgid, thankless, mind numbingly boring task that usually results in costing money.
HMRC have just let me know I owe £25. I suppose better than last year: £112. What I don't get is that they set the tax codes in response to my declarations. How then do they get it wrong (albeit by small amounts) when totted up?
I was filling in a box explaining why one of their figures was wrong, stating (as requested) the document my figure came from. So I entered something like:
Didn't like that. Re-read the question a bit more carefully. Ah - you're not allowed to use the return/enter key (despite it being a multi-line text box). Ok; how about:
Eventually by trial and error I realised that it was the colon which was the offending character. That is, / " - £ ( ) were fine, but not : (and to be fair the error message did give a list of characters allowed which I hadn't read properly).
I'd like to think there's some logic behind that; any suggestions? :)
Either the software or the database has been badly coded using a colon as a seperator somewhere. Therefore it cannot allow that character within a data field since it would then cause an error as it tried to deal with the entry as two fields.
Completed mine this afternoon. A smaller than normal refund, mainly due to the fact I earned very little ( I was abroad lots enjoying myself and under canvas for 8 weeks backpacking the SWCPath) and the interest on my depleting savings was pathetically small.
One bonus was being able to print the completed form out, double sided, from iPad to new canon printer wirelessly. Not bad for a technophobic Luddite. Rewarded myself with a few beers down t'local.
I usually pay in full in mid-December. This did not protect me one from a fine from HMRC. They acknowledged my promptitude and accuracy over the years but it seemed, in spite of their receipt, that I had paid by the wrong method or something. It was only £20 and I couldn't be cheesed to dispute it. I contented myself with sacking my accountant, after he tried to hold me responsible.