A reminder that HMRC may consider extended options for settling your outstanding tax bill. The key is to contact HMRC, explain why you can’t pay on time, and discuss how you can settle any outstanding liabilities.

If you can’t pay before the deadline, call the Business Payment Support Service. Anyone can use this service, not just businesses.

Business Payment Support Service

Telephone: 0300 200 3835
Monday to Friday, 8am to 8pm
Saturday and Sunday, 8am to 4pm
 

Nominated partners in business partnerships can negotiate time to pay with HMRC on behalf of the partnership or individual partners.

If you’ve missed your payment date

If you’ve received a payment demand, like a tax bill or a letter threatening you with legal action, call the HMRC office that sent you the letter.

Call the Business Payment Support Service if you haven’t received a bill or letter about payment yet.

Self-Assessment

Call the Self-Assessment helpline if you’ve missed your payment date.

Telephone: 0300 200 3822
Monday to Friday, 8am to 8pm
Saturday, 8am to 4pm

Since April 2017, you can earn £1,000 from a trading activity and £1,000 of property related income, without being liable to income tax.

These tax-free allowances on property and trading income are useful as families can generate an extra £2,000 a year of income without increasing their tax bills.

Obviously, these small amounts will not be a replacement for your day-job, but they do contribute to financing your monthly bills.

What property income could this cover?

You could rent out:

• your drive as a parking space if you live in an area where parking spaces are at a premium,
• a part of your garden as a paddock or allotments if you have the space.

One interesting aspect of this relief is that if you own property jointly, both parties are eligible for the £1,000 property allowance to set off against their share of the gross rental income.

What trading income could this cover?

The scope for using the £1,000 trading allowance are perhaps easier to exploit. Any hobby where you have an opportunity to sell goods produced, for example:

• internet sales
• craft products
• hiring power tools
• or any service related activity, mobile hairdressing, gardening support, babysitting.

If you do claim either of the above allowances, you cannot claim any expenses related to the activity.

Also, you cannot claim the allowances if the property or trading income is linked to a company, partnership to which you are connected, or your employer or the employer of your spouse or civil partner.

Record keeping

Even though there may be no tax consequence, you are still required to keep a record of your income covered by these allowances.

And one final note, these miscellaneous income sources may also affect your eligibility for benefits and tax credits.

There are three things that you can count on that HMRC will do:

1. Calculate the amount of tax you owe based on the information they have gathered.
2. Chase you for payment of this tax if not recovered by PAYE.
3. Pursue you if they believe you have under-declared your taxable income or made excessive claims to reduce your tax.

What they will not do is advise you to maximise the benefit of reliefs and allowances to which you are entitled to claim.

HMRC rely to some extent on the age-old principal that ignorance of the law is not, in most cases, a valid excuse for not obeying that law.

Stretching that principal to an extreme, if we want to make sure that we are complying with tax law, we should read it before earning profits or income. As most students of tax law will confirm, this is a full-time endeavour, and not one you can effectively undertake as well as your day job.

It is possible for any taxpayer to call HMRC, or to visit their website to check out responsibilities, but it’s difficult to do this if you have no idea what questions to ask.

The grey areas, the tax reduction strategies that the law allows, you will have to discover for yourself. Which is fine if you know what you can claim, but what if you don’t know?

HMRC will merely apply the facts as they are presented. In some respects, the tax profession intervenes to ensure that their clients make the most of the tax allowance and reliefs available, thus relieving HMRC of the responsibility to ensure that you only pay the minimum tax demanded by legislation.

If you are concerned that you may be overpaying tax, please call so that we can discuss your options.

A reminder that HMRC may consider extended options for settling your outstanding tax bill. The key is to contact HMRC, explain why you can’t pay on time, and discuss how you can settle any outstanding liabilities.

If you can’t pay before the deadline, call the Business Payment Support Service. Anyone can use this service, not just businesses.

Business Payment Support Service

Telephone: 0300 200 3835
Monday to Friday, 8am to 8pm
Saturday and Sunday, 8am to 4pm
 

Nominated partners in business partnerships can negotiate time to pay with HMRC on behalf of the partnership or individual partners.

If you’ve missed your payment date

If you’ve received a payment demand, like a tax bill or a letter threatening you with legal action, call the HMRC office that sent you the letter.

Call the Business Payment Support Service if you haven’t received a bill or letter about payment yet.

Self-Assessment

Call the Self-Assessment helpline if you’ve missed your payment date.

Telephone: 0300 200 3822
Monday to Friday, 8am to 8pm
Saturday, 8am to 4pm

The last few weeks have seen some of the most extraordinary political manoeuvrings in the UK parliament, and as we complete the edit of this article, the EU parliament seems to have given us a few extra weeks to complete the withdrawal agreement and get a final draft agreed by parliament. The formal statement issued late last night (22 March 2019) says:

“The European Council agrees to an extension until 22 May 2019, provided the Withdrawal Agreement is approved by the House of Commons next week,” the statement from EU leaders said.

“If the Withdrawal Agreement is not approved by the House of Commons next week, the European Council agrees to an extension until 12 April 2019 and expects the United Kingdom to indicate a way forward before this date for consideration by the European Council.”

Over to you Mrs May…