Late Self Assessment Payment Advice

jax123! · 9 March 2019 at 5:48PM

I owe HMRC over £20,000 for Self Assesment. I have the money invested and can not get it out of my investment yet. There has been a delay, which means I can't pay it yet. I had planned to swallow up the interest and pay them in May.

I was advised my a friend to not contact them but just ignore the letters for now, well that plan didn't go well! I've just had a hand-delivered letter from Debt Management Field Force support.

What are my options now, will I be able to contact HMRC and delay payment? The hand-delivered letter states extra charges beyond the usual HMRC interest.

Thanks

Dazed_and_confused · 9 March 2019 at 6:38PM

There are penalties if you don't pay within 30 days of the the tax being due. According to LITRG you are in line for a £1,000 late payment penalty (plus the interest that is accruing). It is possible the penalty may be less if some of the £20k is a payment on account for 2018:19 rather than all being tax owed for 2017:18.

Did your friend not mention this?

There is information on gov.uk you may find useful.

https://www.gov.uk/difficulties-paying-hmrc

jax123! · 9 March 2019 at 7:12PM

Thanks for the reply. I used the late payment calculator on the HMRC site to estimate my late payment fee and interest if I waited tilln May. It was around £1300. Which I'm fine with, I will lose alot more if I pull my money out of the investment now. So £1300 is fine with me if it means I can wait till May to pay.

The issue is I have now had the Warning of enforcement letter hand delivered where it demands immediate payment and if i dont pay in full immediately they will charge a further £75 for a letter, £235 for another visit and then a further 7.5% on the total debt. And they will then continue to charge interest per day. So that is extra interest which the late payment calculator didnt account for.

My question is, can I get extra time to pay, and just pay what is owed in May without having bailiffs coming after me! Financially I'm far better off paying the interest and waiting to pay it, but would rather HMRC agree to it than ducking Bailiffs!

I may have been naive, but I expected HMRC to just send a few letters and keep adding interest, up to the amount I calculated. I didn't expect debt collectors to be knocking the door threatening removal of goods and adding extra interest on top of what I calculated...especially not so soon!

Petalita · 9 March 2019 at 7:51PM

The extra interest and charges are not the biggest issue here. The letter that you refer to (£75) is a Notice of Enforcement. You will likely receive this is the next few days. You then have 14 days to pay before a further visit (£235 and 7.5% of the debt) however the purpose of this visit is to list any assets you have which can then be removed and sold to pay the debt. Instalment arrangements are possible but granted in cases of hardship or a one off event that has caused you to not pay ie a customer of yours has gone bust and not paid you. There is more info on the hmrc website. You might have had more leeway if you had contacted them earlier, once it gets to enforcement their options are limited.

BoGoF · 9 March 2019 at 8:13PM

To be honest, it was an idiotic approach to take. Had you set up a time to pay arrangement before the late payment trigger date you would only be looking at interest but no penalty.

That said they will not look favourably on time to pay if you have the means to pay in full. The fact there is a penalty for you to access the funds is not their problem.