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Student Self Assessment Confusion

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Hi everyone,

I'm confused about my situation so I thought I'd ask on here about it. I'm a student who just had a part time job from beginning of October 2017 to beginning of December 2017. It was my only job/income this year. It was for 10 weeks at an art gallery and overall I earned about £1,800. The gallery didn't pay taxes for us and people at my job told told me to register for self assessment/self employed. I have never done it so I decided to do it through the phone sometime at the end of October because it was easier. The guy on the phone told me I will get a letter posted to my house but he wasn't very clear (I assumed it will have my UTR on it). Nothing came through, it's now December and I think the deadline to pay is 31st of January? Will I be fined/get a penalty? I don't have a UTR code so I can't fill in any forms (well I don't even know what forms I'd have to fill in, I'm very new to this). I've also been reading online and gathered that I might get this letter in April after the end of tax year but that's after the deadline?
I'm just lost and very confused.

Also this is a very stupid/banal question but am I worrying for nothing? A lot of people/students that worked there with me don't think even bothered to register or even though about paying tax so maybe I'm thinking too much about this and shouldn't even have bothered to do all of this? On one hand I earned way under the personal allowance, it was only 2 months and I'm a student but on the other hand I want to be a good person and not do anything illegal.

I'm planning to call them later in the week because they're closed for a few days but I would rather not have this anxiety over Christmas so I thought maybe someone here would be able to kindly help and offer advice. Thank you so much in advance and Merry Christmas!
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Comments

  • agrinnall
    agrinnall Posts: 23,344 Forumite
    10,000 Posts Combo Breaker
    I would very much doubt if your job was a self employed position, so the gallery should have employed you and paid you through PAYE. If it was me that would be the position I'd take with HMRC and get the gallery into trouble with them, which might remove the need for you to account for your income at all.

    You can check here what your status for tax is:

    https://www.gov.uk/guidance/check-employment-status-for-tax

    As it happens, there is no tax to pay on your earnings because you are well under the personal allowance. Even if there had been, self employed tax wouldn't be due until January 2019. There would probably be a small amount of National Insurance due, but how much would depend on whether you were paying it as self employed or as an employee. I would wait until you have spoken to HMRC, there may well be a simple solution that doesn't require you to do Self Assessment.
  • PasturesNew
    PasturesNew Posts: 70,698 Forumite
    Part of the Furniture 10,000 Posts Name Dropper Photogenic
    As above re self-employment.

    In answer to your specific question, if you earnt the money Oct-Dec 2017, then the self-assessment form would be for the tax year (April) 2017 - (April) 2018 and so you wouldn't, as a self-employed person, have even finished the current trading year.... the form to which you refer, if relevant, would not need to be done until after the start of April 2018. There is one date for doing a paper-based return (~ October 2018) and another date for doing it online (January 2019).

    So you can stop fretting about filling in the form at least.

    Those earnings, in isolation, wouldn't give you a tax bill to pay. As self-employed, whether you made enough money to pay tax or not, you fill in the form and at the end they tell you how much tax you owe....which in your case on those figures would be £0.
  • No tax or NI due, I wouldn’t have bothered notifying HMRC. Agree with the points above about whether or not you were really self employed, but you haven’t gone into detail about what you were doing.
  • badmemory
    badmemory Posts: 9,533 Forumite
    Ninth Anniversary 1,000 Posts Name Dropper
    To summarise - you owe nothing - nothing to worry about so stop worrying. Even if you did owe anything it wouldn't be due until Jan 19. So relax & enjoy the New Year.
  • 00ec25
    00ec25 Posts: 9,123 Forumite
    1,000 Posts Combo Breaker
    edited 26 December 2017 at 4:52PM
    the info you present is incomplete and impossible to be certain what is going on

    you state you "earned" £1800 over 10 weeks
    - how often were you paid? weekly so you got 10 lots of payments or monthly so you got 3 payments?
    - what were you given to support the payment you received? a payslip? nothing?

    one would expect even an art gallery to have at least the rudimentary understanding of employment rules and tax, so....

    a) to be self employed you should not have been paid even a penny unless you submitted an invoice ... I rather doubt you did. So if they simply gave you a payment without any documentation from you asking to be paid the fault lies wholly with them. If "they" have told you that you "are" self employed they are almost certainly wrong and breaking employment law ... please explain what they told you?

    b) if they treated you as an employee, they should have given you a payslip. To treat you as an employee they should have established if you had done any paid work at all since April 2017 to Oct 17. If you told them you had not, then they are perfectly correct in paying you what they owe you without deduction of income tax as they would use a cumulative tax code (which is equivalent to £958 pcm tax free on a cumulative basis) so your entire £1,800 earnings = < cumulative allowance April - Oct (£6,708). Read this https://www.citizensadvice.org.uk/debt-and-money/tax/income-tax-how-much-should-you-pay/income-tax/

    however, you have not explained how you were paid. NI works differently to income tax in that NI should be deducted from every payment you receive that is > £157 per week (£680.33 per month) and given you say you were paid £1,800 over 10 weeks that averages as £180 per week so mathematically that is above 157 per week and some NI should have been paid. Was it?

    please fill in the missing info.....
  • agrinnall
    agrinnall Posts: 23,344 Forumite
    10,000 Posts Combo Breaker
    No tax or NI due...

    What's your basis for saying no NI is due? I believe it is very likely that some is due, and 00ec25 has provided detailed reasons why it would be.
  • agrinnall wrote: »
    What's your basis for saying no NI is due? I believe it is very likely that some is due, and 00ec25 has provided detailed reasons why it would be.

    It depends which NI class we are talking about but if OP is genuinely self employed it’s well below the annual threshold for class 2 and 4 NIC.
  • 00ec25 wrote: »
    the info you present is incomplete and impossible to be certain what is going on

    you state you "earned" £1800 over 10 weeks
    - how often were you paid? weekly so you got 10 lots of payments or monthly so you got 3 payments?
    - what were you given to support the payment you received? a payslip? nothing?

    one would expect even an art gallery to have at least the rudimentary understanding of employment rules and tax, so....

    a) to be self employed you should not have been paid even a penny unless you submitted an invoice ... I rather doubt you did. So if they simply gave you a payment without any documentation from you asking to be paid the fault lies wholly with them. If "they" have told you that you "are" self employed they are almost certainly wrong and breaking employment law ... please explain what they told you?

    b) if they treated you as an employee, they should have given you a payslip. To treat you as an employee they should have established if you had done any paid work at all since April 2017 to Oct 17. If you told them you had not, then they are perfectly correct in paying you what they owe you without deduction of income tax as they would use a cumulative tax code (which is equivalent to £958 pcm tax free on a cumulative basis) so your entire £1,800 earnings = < cumulative allowance April - Oct (£6,708).

    however, you have not explained how you were paid. NI works differently to income tax in that NI should be deducted from every payment you receive that is > £157 per week (£680.33 per month) and given you say you were paid £1,800 over 10 weeks that averages as £180 per week so mathematically that is above 157 per week and some NI should have been paid. Was it?

    please fill in the missing info.....

    ok i'm sorry about that. i will try to provide as much information as i can. this was a temporary job for a gallery as an invigilator. the gallery did a pop up exhibition in a bigger location which was for those 10 weeks so they hired us temporarily for this exhibition. our job was to invigilate so we basically stood next to an artwork and made sure no one touched it or damaged it. we had a manager looking over us on site but that was it, we didn't really have contact with the people higher up. we were paid every two weeks and we had to submit invoices with our hours on it and information like bank details, address etc. to an email that our manager was looking after. she would then send it off to the gallery for us to get paid. my payments fluctuated depending on how busy i was

    first payment was on 2/11 for week 1 (£200), week 2 (£195) & week 3 (£110)
    2nd payment 16/11 - week 4 (£80) & 5 (£155)
    3rd payment 30/11 - week 6 (£190) & 7 (£105)
    4th payment 14/12- week 8 (£260) & 9 (£290)
    5th payment 21/12 - week 10 (£215)

    we would send off our invoices, get paid and that was it. they didnt send anything back to us or anything. at the bottom of the invoice there was a box that stated "I am aware I am liable for my own Tax and National Insurance deductions.
    Electronic Signature OR print name:" so we had to write our name on there and thats why i called hmrc and signed up via the phone for "self assessment". i think they did this so they would have less responsibility

    they didn't ask us about our previous jobs or anything, i think they didn't care at all and just wanted people to work there regardless of anything they've done. this whole job is now more of a hassle than what it was worth so if i could turn back time i wouldn't have done it.

    they didn't pay any ni for us either, they said we are responsible for it so no, nothing has been paid yet but i want to sort it out because i know i have to (some weeks i went over £157 and some i didn't)

    hope this answers your questions
  • As above re self-employment.

    In answer to your specific question, if you earnt the money Oct-Dec 2017, then the self-assessment form would be for the tax year (April) 2017 - (April) 2018 and so you wouldn't, as a self-employed person, have even finished the current trading year.... the form to which you refer, if relevant, would not need to be done until after the start of April 2018. There is one date for doing a paper-based return (~ October 2018) and another date for doing it online (January 2019).

    So you can stop fretting about filling in the form at least.

    Those earnings, in isolation, wouldn't give you a tax bill to pay. As self-employed, whether you made enough money to pay tax or not, you fill in the form and at the end they tell you how much tax you owe....which in your case on those figures would be £0.

    thank you for your response

    with the dates that you said, is it safe for me to assume that my "registration" letter from hmrc with my tax code on it will be posted to me after the end of the tax year aka 5 april 2018? or should i chase it up for them to send me one now? i think i read online that it should've taken them 2 weeks after registration

    also just for reassurance - for registration, you have to register every year right? when i registered at the end of october 2017, i told the guy that i will be only working from oct2017-dec2017 therefore he musti've only registered me for the tax year 2017-2018 right? or for 2016-2017 as well? it was after 5th october (deadline for 2016-2017) so i assume he only registered me for 2017-2018 so i dont have to worry about 2016-2017 (i didnt have a job between that period anyway) and the deadline thats in jan2018 because it doesnt apply to me, correct? or unless i'm now "registered/he registered me for 2016-2017 do i need to tell them i earned £0 between 6 april 2016 and 5 april 2017?

    sorry about my questions, just wanting to make sure i udnerstood and thank you for all your help so far, really put my mind at ease!
  • Doesn’t sound like genuine self employment to me but is not really your problem if HMRC come after them for evading employers NIC and failing to operate payroll correctly.

    It sounds like you’ll end up with a notice to file a tax return for the current tax year in April which will be due by end of Jan 19.

    As I said above so long as you have no other income in his tax year there won’t be any tax or NI due so it won’t take long to fill out.

    You won’t need to register each year. HMRC will likely keep requesting a tax return each tax year so you’ll need to deregister as self employed.
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