Self Assessment tax return - earned nothing but owe money

comp-uter_guy

Hi all. I was hoping somebody could please help me. In previous years I worked in my free time as an Internet researcher for AQA/63336 (in addition to my full-time job). This role was self-employed so I had to fill out a tax return. However, due to a change in circumstances I haven't actually done any of this work for a few years. I have also never got around to letting HMRC know so I need to still fill out a tax return for this time (which is fine). However, despite my self-employed earnings for the 2012/13 year totalling £0.00, I was shocked to find out that I owe £732 for this tax year!

I believe that this short-fall is down to my student loan repayments. I'm coming to the end of my loan repayments so during the 2012/13 financial year, the Student Loan Company changed my repayments from my full-time employer to Direct Debit payments. As such, these DD payments cannot be declared in the 'Student loan repayments deducted by your employer' section. By manually adding what my employer would have taken over the year and doing a recalculation, this short-fall is pretty much met. However, there was a period of a few months where my employer contributions had stopped and my DD hadn't yet started (down to the SLC rather than me). So if I enter actual payments and recalculate again, I still owe £400 or so. Surely that can't be right?

I asked the question in an email to HMRC but got a standard response that didn't answer my question so I wanted to see if any of you could give me any advice before I'm forced to call them. Thanks in advance for any help.

Gas_Powered_Toothbrush

http://www.hmrc.gov.uk/manuals/cslmanual/cslm19040.htm

Specifically...

To improve this process HMRC and SLC have worked together and the SLC are now able to offer borrowers who are either

Fully PAYE
Or

Are a combination of PAYE and SA
And

Who are in the final 23 months of repaying their loan
an option to repay by a direct debit arrangement. This arrangement is administered solely by the SLC. In these circumstances no SA calculation will be made and employers will be instructed to stop all deductions from pay

Amend the return to say that you don't have a student loan and you should be fine.