Self assessment & pension

mng2012

I just completed my first SA after retiring in June 2011, so I had both earnings and pension to declare. I duly ticked the 'received pension' box at the start of the return. When I got to that section, the first entry was for the amount of 'State pension' (SP) received - but as i am only 61, that was zero. The on-line process would not let me into the section to identify the amount of occupational pension received unless I entered a non-zero amount in the SP box, so I put in a figure of one, and continued.

I don't care about the 20p of tax refund I will lose because of this, but either the web forms are broken, or I made a mistake somewhere. Anyone else had this experience?

Any responses gratefully received. Martin

nomunnofun

The order of the questions are:

State Pension (the amount due for the year)

State Pension Lump Sum

Tax taken off lump sum

Pensions (other than State Pension), retirement annuities and taxable triviality payments:

Your occupational pension would go in the last box. Is it possible that entering '0' in the state pension box is the problem - leave it blank to see if that rectifies it.

John_Pierpoint

Leave it blank. When I was designing data input forms in the 1960s the form clearly defined what was expected and the validation of 0 or 0.00 was perfectly acceptable as was leaving the field blank. Usually blank means that there isn't one. [it is a pity that National Insurance Number is not a unique identifier or the tax man could know already and show you what it was]

I've not been allowed to use the on-line form since 2008 and it does not seem to have improved, if anything it has got worse, when I was allowed back on for 2011/12.
When I got to the question about rental property and it asked how many properties I had, I was faced by a long field, so I wrote "ONE", the validation objected. When I entered 99,999,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,9 (quadrillion) it did not like that much either so we settled on 1. I did not feel I had time to try all the other stupidities.

fishpond

Leaving it blank should do the trick.

mng2012

Thanks for the replies - my first attempt left the field blank, and this was converted into the non-allowed zero. I can't try again now without risking messing up my completed return. If I get a response from HMRC to my question about this in the return, I will let you all know.