Enough time to fill in a self assessment form?!

villa1874

I am a full time PAYE employee and have been doing freelance work independently of that since July 2012. Tax wise, I assumed I could just wait until near the end of the tax year, April, before declaring the extra income and filling out relevant forms to pay tax owed.


It’s only in the past week that I’ve been reminded that the deadline for self assessment is the end of this month. Have I got enough time to sort all this out? And I won’t get into trouble declaring so late will I?

A few things I’ve read have alarmed me – things like “register as self employed ASAP” and implications that you can get into trouble if you fail to declare immediately that you’re doing freelance work.

I’ve only earned about £800 extra the last year and I’m declaring in the same tax year so I’m sure I’d be fine.

PlutoinCapricorn

The deadline relates to tax year 2011/12, which ended April 5th 2012.

John_Pierpoint

Assuming that your new business earnings are a long term effort and not just some one off casual earnings, you might want to read and comply with its instructions.

You will probably want to opt out of the small class 2 national insurance weekly levy.

http://www.hmrc.gov.uk/startingup/

sitesafe

(meant january 2014 for edit)You won't have to fill a tax return out yet as if you started in July 2012 you will be in the 2012/2013 tax year so if you're doing it online it will be due in by this this time next year (Jan 2014) (or if it's the paper one october this year (2013) - up to you if you choose paper or online - I was told I couldn't do the paper one when I did mine last year and there were lots of problems getting them to send the right form that by the time they did it was too late so I had to do it online even though it wasn't my fault...I thought they had done away with the paper versions but knowing other people who are using it then obviously not...

villa1874

Great advice, and relieved I don't have to adhere to the imminent deadline! Thanks very much everyone.

Savvy_Sue

villa1874 wrote: »

Great advice, and relieved I don't have to adhere to the imminent deadline!

No, but you SHOULD register ASAP because you could be fined for late notification.

The opt out John P mentioned is a small earnings exemption from paying NI, and as long as your profit from self employment (income less expenses) is less than c.£6000 it's the way to go, because you don't get any benefit from it if you're also paying NI through PAYE.

And you should also be putting aside at least 20% of your s/e profit, ready for the tax bill, plus a bit more because of 'payment on account' - that's where HMRC requires you to pay your current year's tax bill during the year. I'm not going to be able to explain it very well, but you should make sure you understand it, either to satisfy yourself that your earnings will be low enough to avoid this, OR to ensure you don't get a nasty shock when you do your first tax return NEXT year.