Budget 2015 comment

"i'm Abolishing annual tax returns".
Politicians empty waffle-speak. There's no substantive change.
Most punters still lumbered with filing annual stuff with HMRCy.

Most of us do it onslime anyway already, especially eeeeasy when using a fantabulous firm of chartered accountants like abell morliss international !

SA Tax Return filing rush problem solved

Get HMRCy to bring the deadline forward to 30th November. Think it through......

When do clients do anything? Only in Sept-Nov because they are BUSY BUSY people the rest of the year, and we have to FIT IN. Full details of my reasoning are below:-

Jan  getting over Christmas, check over skiing gear

Feb skiing

Mar Spring soon, leaf through some holiday brochures

Apr yo, can walk outside again, see if that Bistro has put some tables back outside

May dig out the barbie

Jun tennis

Jul Ibitha

Aug Zakanthos

Sep

Oct

Nov

Dec yo partytime

etc.....

As you can see three is a solid three month window where we have their un-divided attention, and indeed ours also.

This simple change would also mean i could enjoy Christmas, and not have to keep rushing in to the office to shuffle papers and cheer the troops on.

What's not to like?

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