Can anyone recommend a tax calc website/spreadsheet?

C_Mababejive

But with all your experience Pennywise ,,how can HMRC expect ordinary members of the public(especially those carp at sums like me) to even attempt to register and pay? They have no clue as to what to do and what to pay? Surely this will lead to lots of undeclared income as people just bury their collective heads in the sand and hope for the best ?

The idiot of downing street should have simply left savings income collected at source and not messed with introducing his bent and misleading dividend allowances.

polymaff

C_Mababejive wrote: »

Me being foolish i thought it would be so simple? Why isnt it? I dont have any complex products or situations. All i have is paye income,savings and some divis...

It is because the allocation of the aggregate personal allowance is quite complex. The rest is still quite easy. In the past, HMRC used to allocate aggregate personal allowances on the same basis as the order-of-taxation - even if this was not optimal. Everyone now seems to have woken up to the reality that you can allocate them as you like - and that it is HMRC's duty to allocate them in a manner which minimises the taxpayer's liability.

Most cases are - just by accident - optimised when you do use the order-of-taxation. One used to be able to say that if the tax-payer was not a higher rate one - which covers about 86% - they could rely on the order-of-taxation rule to get it right. The introduction of the SRA has gouged a group of those tax-payers out of that simple circumstance, and the PSA and DA have done the same to many of the other 14%.

For the non-complex majority you barely need a spreadsheet. For the past few years I've published on MSE a "simple, visual model" of the Income Tax Assessment process which has never been faulted in its logic - but I had to caveat it with respect to optimisation of application of the aggregate personal allowance. Its spreadsheet equivalent is a very simple task.

polymaff

C_Mababejive wrote: »

The idiot of downing street should have simply left savings income collected at source and not messed with introducing his bent and misleading dividend allowances.

Which idiot is that?

IMHO there is nothing wrong with recent changes - except HMRC's clear incompetence in not understanding them. If they had the necessary competence then your original point wouldn't be an issue. There would be a single, definitive and free version of your opening post's requirement - your self-assessment SA100 on HMRC's website.