Late Registration as SA penalty?

[Deleted User]

A friend of mine has been making a few online sales through ebay and making a small amount way below the tax & NI lower limits for around 1 year now but they have not registered as self-employed and they would like to complete a self assessment for the 2013-2013 tax year.

After researching online I see that the £100 penalty and 3 month period was changed. If they registered online now for SA, got a UTR and completed the tax return due by Jan 2014, would there still be any penalties? Considering they were unprompted to come forward, they earned not enough to pay any tax and they could have been exempt from NI 2 contributions? Just to complicate things further this friend is Romanian and is allowed to work in the UK as self-employed but they are worried because of the delay of not registering if they may be considered as working self-employed without registering. Should they worry?

Kynthia

What is your friend selling on ebay? Is it like a commercial business with items they are making a profit from or are they just selling a few things they originally bought for personal use?
http://www.hmrc.gov.uk/guidance/selling/examples.htm

Rochdale_Pioneers

He could be left waiting for his UTR number even if he does register. There is a long backlog (what happens when you greatly increase the number of people who need to do SA as you slash staff numbers).

I hope to get mine before the Jan deadline so I can actually do my tax return, if not I suppose they will find me for them not sending my code out....