Do I actually owe anything on my tax return?

zaza82

Hi Everyone,

I know i'm late in filling my tax returns (i've only just registered online tonight & it takes 7 days to activate my account, argh!)

Bascially I set up as a freelance graphic designer around the end of March last year (2009), I didn't earn any money until May this year. I only freelanced for a few months whilst I was inbetween jobs & didn't earn much, there were no set up cost.

My questions are...
Do I owe the tax man anything?

Do I still have to do tax return?

Please help having a major stress!

Thanks,

Zara

alwaysonthego_2

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downshifter

zaza82 wrote: »

Hi Everyone,

I know i'm late in filling my tax returns (i've only just registered online tonight & it takes 7 days to activate my account, argh!)

Bascially I set up as a freelance graphic designer around the end of March last year (2009), I didn't earn any money until May this year. I only freelanced for a few months whilst I was inbetween jobs & didn't earn much, there were no set up cost.

My questions are...
Do I owe the tax man anything?

Do I still have to do tax return?

Please help having a major stress!

Thanks,

Zara

The tax return that's due on 31st Jan is for the year ending end of March 2009, so it sounds as though you didn't do any freelance work during that period. Were you working for an employer during that year? in which case you will have paid through PAYE so shouldn't need to complete a tax return anyway.

Hopefully though, you registered as self-employed when you started freelancing, at least that would keep your NI payments up. They'll send you a tax form for this current year.

cosyc

Ring to check the starting date you gave HMRC, if before 6 April you may have a return due but they will tell you. If yes then even if you earn money you may have expenses or set up costs paid before 6 april to go down. Best bet ring.

tyllwyd

But if you do find you have to fill in a tax return, don't panic about it. Make sure you can find your paperwork showing how much you earned and tax paid in any PAYE jobs. If you've got any savings accounts, find out the interest earned and tax paid on that interest. Work out how much you earned in your freelance job between March and the end of the tax year (if you started a job before the end of the tax year but didn't get paid until after, my understanding is that you account for an appropriate percentage in both tax years). Did you get JobSeekers allowance or other taxable benefits? Any other sources of income? Once you've got that info, it is easy enough to follow the questions and fill in the form.

If you only freelanced for a few months and you've stopped now and didn't register as self-employed, I'd have thought you could probably declare your freelance income as 'other earnings' for that year. If you didn't earn anything from your freelancing in that tax year and you've paid the right amount of tax on all your other income then there shouldn't be anything more to pay.

Edited to say - but thinking about it more, when you were freelancing while you didn't have a PAYE job, if you weren't registered as self-employed I'm not sure about the NI situation, so maybe it's a bit more complicated than that.