A fine for a day late with payment?

slink01

Due to my bank not allowing transfers of anything over £10,000, i had to set up a direct debit through the HMRC site to pay my tax bill. It looks like the money only left my account on thursday morning and the HMRC site is not showing that my bill has been paid yet - i am guessing that they will receive the money on monday 1st Feb (3 business days). Would i face a fine for payment being a day late? Everything was set in motion with what i thought was enough time, but the direct debit option through the HMRC site seems to have taken ages to kick in....

zygurat789

There's no fine for paying late, only interest charged on a daily basis.
The fine is for not filing your tax return by 31/01/2010.
The fine is either £100 or the tax payable if less than £100.

Mikeyorks

Largely depends upon which day you selected for the (one-off?) DD payment? That should be the effective date for the payment. If it left your Bank Thursday then (DD debits / credits normally synchronise) HMRC should treat it as received Thu 28th. But there may be a bit of time easing the credits onto the main SA accounting system and then cutting them back onto the online ..... which is what you're looking at.

You should be more than OK with it having an effective date prior 31st Jan.

ceeforcat

The fine is linked to the tax return. If you have submitted it you will have no fine - just one days interest on the late payment.

slink01

thanks guys, yes i think the site said that the 28th was the earliest that the DD would work so i imagine that it is all in hand and that the site just hasn't updated yet.

Mikeyorks

Yes - they get around 500k payments daily from all sources at the moment. So it gets a tad busy! But yours should be posted with an effective date of 28/1.

horseykitty

About 2 years ago my husband did my payment under his number as well as his own. We were unaware of this until he got a notice of overpayment/rebate - whatever. It was only when we realised that it was the same amount that my payment should have been that we realised the mistake. This was in about April - the Tax Office hadn't noticed that I hadn't paid my tax owing. I think I got charged £12 interest which was added onto my next bill - they didn't accept that he had made a genuine mistake.

ajbisgr8

Hi horseykitty,

The tax office should have reallocated the overpayment on your husbands account to yours using the same date of payment for both, so if the payment made was on time you should not have been charged any interest.

If however they refunded the overpayment to your husband and then you paid yours out of that refund then the date of payment would be late and that would explain the interest.