Forced into Self Assessment - first timer advice needed (+ a LOT of background info)

rallycurve

So you need to start filing a self assessment because your income from savings is over £10,000 and you are asking if it is a good idea to stop earning any interest so you don't have to do this?

Do you realise you would be thousands of pounds worse off? If you are a base rate tax payer, you would be losing more than £8,000 (or if you were an additional rate tax payer, you'd be at least £6,500 worse off) 

I agree with previous replies that a SA should be really straightforward for you. But if you don't want to bother, surely keeping your money in savings account generating interest and using some of those ££ to pay an accountant to do your SA would be much better than not having any savings income at all?

TheTelltaleChart

Perfectly unstandable to be a bit thrown by being dragged into self-assessment when you have simple finances. However, once you've done it once (which it's too late to get out of now), you will find it easy in future years. So I'd fotget about the suggestions to avoid earning so much interest again.

I do think the suggestions here to "just" get an accountant to do it are rather missing the point. The accountant would then ask you to get together all the info they need to fill in the tax return, so you'd still be doing most of the work. (Accountants can be useful for people with more complicated tax affairs.)

Sounds like you are nearly there, anyway. It is probably just the P60 stuff + interest that you need to fill in. You mentioned that your NS&I Direct Saver interest is 'left in', but (just in case this isn't clear) you should include all interest added to the account during the tax year that the tax return is for. Plus any interest added to Natwest accounts (if you have any accounts with them that pay interest).

 It does seem likely that the Wealth Builder and Investment Bonds are not something you'd need to report on when you're not taking anything out of them, but if you could post here a bit more from the paperwork describing what they are, then some posters would be able to comment more accurately about that.