Wednesday 4 November 2009

UTR

Now that you have returned from that looong summer on the yacht, and are focusing on the more mundane things in life (or should be)...

Why not get your tax return out of the way before you slumber under the Christmas Tree? Unfortunately the massive problem stopping you responding to all those expensive adverts urging attending to this annual task, is often "what's my UTR malc?"
No UTR= can't file your tax return! NiNo is not enough anymore.

Sadly the ONLY way to get this is to call in to any tax enquiry office or telephone HMRC and ask them for it. Apparently these references are sooooo sensitive they cannot be uttered over our communications network in any form, so they will write to you with it. Security is such an issue that if they have written to you demanding a tax return they are not permitted to put your utr on the request, only your NiNo.

When you call them don't get side-tracked into a massive quiz "why do you want it, maybe you don't need to do a tax return"? etc. Just firmly tell them that "you know you want to do a tax return so hand the xxxx thing over without wasting more of my time".

who needs to do a tax return?
anyone who has been asked for one by hmrc. how do i know? - ring them up.....
all company directors
all higher-rate taxpayers
anyone with income from property/lettings
anyone with significant investment/dividend income
anyone with capital gains e.g. flogging your barclays shares for £600m. profit after 8 months
anyone with income from overseas, whether or not already taxed
anyone who has income the inland revenue don't know about

Companies Act 2006

Well implementation is now well upon us. We all have to get used to new forms, procedures, rules. 'Amazingly' the new system is more difficult to use/understand than the old one, so yet another step backwards along the nirvana path advertised to us by our political masters of reducing regulatory burdens on UK business.

It is suuuuch a shame as Companies House UK are so much better than other Eurozone offerings. At a recent meeting it was clear the big boys at coho were surprised at all the queries/complaints/problems, and in fact stated again (effectively) how inept they are at proper pre-launch testing of their shiny new software packages.