Each year, across the UK, millions of sole traders, freelancers and self-employed people face the HMRC tax deadline.
HMRC reported that, in 2019 alone, a total of 10,833,177 tax returns were submitted, with 735,258 of them being left to the last day.
So, why do so many of us leave it to the last minute?
It really is simple. It may feel like a daunting task to filing your tax return online. It takes time, money and energy. It may also feel like a task that you don’t really understand.
This is something that we can help you change, starting with the following three steps.
1. Get Prepared
Existing Bookkeeping4u customers will benefit from this blog article on how to prepare your accounts for your tax return. If you don’t already use Xero for your accounts then you can find out more here.
2. Put the Important Dates in the Diary
When you’re working for yourself time moves fast and it’s easy to forget the HMRC deadlines. Get these important tax dates in the diary.
6th April 2019 – Start of New Tax Year
31st July 2019 – Deadline for 2nd payment on account for tax year 2018/2019.
5th October 2019 – The deadline to tell HMRC about a new source of taxable income or a capital gain in the tax year 2018/19
31st December 2019 – One month until tax return is due
31st January 2020 – Online self-assessment tax returns for 2018/19 tax year must be submitted by this date and the balance on any tax due must be paid by 31st January 2020 for 2018 / 2019. The first payment on account is also due towards tax year 2019/20.
5th April 2020 – End of Tax Year 2019/2020
3. Getting help with your tax return
There have been a lot of improvements in recent years to the self-assessment process by HMRC. If you, like many other sole traders want to complete your Tax Return yourself, so long as you are prepared, shouldn’t take you that long.
But you might also want to seek help from Bookkeeping4u. We can
Complete your tax return for you
Make sure you don’t make any mistakes
Ensure that you don’t miss out on any tax allowances you could be claiming.
Support you with any investigations from HMRC too. So it may be worth a small price to ensure you are as tax efficient as possible.
Get it touch if you have any questions about doing your tax return, or anything else related to managing your business admin. One of our friendly support team is on hand to help.
Check out our blog post '10 Most Common Self Assessment Mistakes' here