MSE News: Self-assessment deadline looming – don't miss the 31 January deadline

colsaldo

shortchanged wrote: »

Well if my experience is anything to go by, good luck anyone trying to get tax reference number now. I applied for one online back in October and still haven't received one! Several phonecalls have acheived nothing.

I'm sorry to say but HMRC is out of its depth now.

It's all well and good HMRC threatening fines for late submissions when they can't even give you a simple number which you need in order to proceed. Ridiculous really. If my case is anything to go by no wonder tax revenues are down in the UK.

If you're referring to your 12 digit Government Gateway pass code, HMRC usually send it out within the week, and then I think you have a month to use it before it expires. So, if you applied in October and didn't receive it by the end of November, you should be applying for a new one anyway. HMRC's advisers can't tell you what the number is, its a bit like a bank card's pin number. And they don't have control over the post so they don't know if it arrived or not. If it doesn't arrive, its the taxpayers responsibility to apply for a new one.

I sympathise, but everyone gets the same 9 months to file their return. The reasons you've noted here are unlikely to be be sufficient for a successful appeal

dori2o

colsaldo wrote: »

If you're referring to your 12 digit Government Gateway pass code, HMRC usually send it out within the week, and then I think you have a month to use it before it expires. So, if you applied in October and didn't receive it by the end of November, you should be applying for a new one anyway. HMRC's advisers can't tell you what the number is, its a bit like a bank card's pin number. And they don't have control over the post so they don't know if it arrived or not. If it doesn't arrive, its the taxpayers responsibility to apply for a new one.

I sympathise, but everyone gets the same 9 months to file their return. The reasons you've noted here are unlikely to be be sufficient for a successful appeal

Anyone who applies for a Government Gateway ID, or if you have forgotten your password and require the account to be reset, then you will be given an extension on completing the tax return.

So long as it is submitted by 15 February then you will not incur the late submission penalty.

This only refers to the completion of the form itself. Any tax that is due is still due on 31 January 2015, So if you want to avoid any interest charges then calculate yoourself what you owe and make the payment on/before 31 January and make sure the Tax Return is completed by the 15th Feb.

Pincher

It's too late to send a paper tax return, so any attachments will have to fit under the memory size maximum.


A couple of years ago, I had nearly 30 pages to attach altogether, and raw printer scans simply wouldn't fit. Fortunately, the free HP software that came with the printer lets you build a multi-page pdf document, and the size was very reasonable. All the pages fitted under the maximum, in colour!

Spidernick

If anyone has still to file their 12/13 tax return there's even more of an incentive here, as there's another £300 penalty after 31 January 2015. Saying that, if you haven't filed this tax return yet then you will probably already be sitting on £1,300 of late-filing penalties as it is!

colsaldo

Quote from question of the week in the email..."If you can't afford to pay, contact HMRC urgently as you may be able to avoid interest by coming to an arrangement to spread payments."

An arrangement to spread payments will still incurr interest, you may however avoid late payment penalties by having an agreed arrangement with HMRC