Newsletter December 2017

Self Assessment tax payments

Self-employed persons and other individuals who submit a self-assessment (SA) tax return should bear in mind that there are only two months until the electronic filing and payment deadline for 2016/2017 that is 31 January 2018.

If you have not filed the 2016-17 SA return yet, or at the very least crunched the numbers to work out if you owe any arrears of tax for 2016-17, you may want to attend to this as soon as possible. Otherwise, you will be shortening the period when you have time to consider gathering funds together to meet any tax payment on 31 January 2018.

On the same date, 31 January 2018, you will also need to make a payment on account for the following tax year, 2017/2018. Basically, if the total tax exceeds the “de-minus” figure of £1,000, this will be based on fifty percent of your liability for 2016-17 with a similar payment July 2018. So again, knowing what the earlier year’s liability is will provide the information you need to save for this additional tax payment.

As we have outlined previously, if your income is reducing during the current year (2017/18) you can elect for payments on account to be reduced.

If you miss the 31 January 2018 deadline for filing your SA return, you will incur an automatic late filing penalty of £100 that will increase to £10 per day if not filed promptly thereafter.

This is all part of the basic self-assessment planning we undertake for clients. If you have previously managed your own tax filing, and would like to out-source this annual chore, we would be delighted to hear from you.

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