Christmas Day Timetable: Open presents. Eat too much. File tax return?
Perhaps your third task of the day was to watch a Christmas film, but 2,616 UK taxpayers submitted their self assessment tax return on Christmas Day itself.
According to HMRC’s newly released statistics, 204 taxpayers clicked complete on their tax return before 8 o’clock on Christmas morning. In a way, this is a great present to give yourself, the satisfaction of knowing that it’s all done. You managed to get up well before the children to plough through it and now you can enjoy the rest of the day.
The other 2,412 managed to fit it in between turkey dinner, unwrapping presents, visiting relatives and their family’s other Christmas traditions. Interestingly, this is a rise of 1% from last year’s Christmas Day filing of 2,590.
Boxing day self assessment tax returns
Boxing Day self assessment filing also rose by 10% to 8,465, compared to last year’s figures. How do people manage to fit it in and why do they choose to do this aspect of their administration during the festive period? These are interesting questions to ponder. Perhaps it’s an avoidance tactic for those who aren’t as Christmassy as the rest of us.
Maybe they are literally the only days, particularly self employed people, are not actually working. It is certainly the time of year when most businesses aren’t trading, so you’re not losing time doing paperwork when you could be earning. If you did some festive filing, what were your reasons?
Which? Research into self assessment process
The consumer research organisation Which? did a survey of 4,500 people in November 2018. Their results highlighted some key flaws within the self assessment tax return filing system.
- 28% participants said they had difficulty completing the tax return process
- 9% said they needed longer than five hours to finish their form
- A small number needed more than 15 hours to complete their tax return
As non-experts in tax, many people expect to need a reasonable amount of time to follow through an entire tax related task. But, as HMRC aim for more elements of the tax system’s administration to be done by taxpayers online, it is important to make every process as accessible as possible.
It’s not just investing hours of time, there’s the worry of receiving a financial penalty for making an honest mistake. According to the Which? survey, more than 10% of people said they thought they’d paid more tax than they should have through the self assessment system. So, costing taxpayers time and money.
Some of the answers give helpful guidance to HMRC about how to improve the system, to make it simpler and more accurate. 28% of the survey’s participants said that they spent the largest proportion of their time trying to understand the forms themselves, with 14% stumped by “tax jargon”.
HMRC now have a whole year to consider this issue of clarity, before the next deadline comes looming into the horizon.
When is the tax return deadline?
The deadline for your 2017-18 self assessment tax return is midnight on 31st January 2019. This is also when you need to pay your tax bill.
Warning: there are fines for missing the SA deadline
HMRC have a cumulative penalties system for taxpayers who miss the filing deadline and they can mount up quickly.
1 day late: £100 fixed penalty
3 months late: additional £10 per day, up to 90 days
6 months late: additional £300 or 5% of your tax bill (the bigger number)
12 months late: additional £300 or 5% of your tax bill
Worst case scenario: 100% of your tax bill, double the amount you owe
It is really not worth throwing away your hard earned money on fines. If you know you need to file your self assessment tax return, make sure you don’t ignore the deadline. You’ve still got plenty of time to get organised and find expert help if you need it. So, if you aren’t a festive filer, get it on the top of your new year’s to do list.
