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Tax return blues - would a bit of solidarity help?

Seriously? You do all the calculations and the bloody thing can't even just take you to a checkout where the amount to pay is already filled in????

Weeks of work and worry and I owe the fuckers £61.75. That's going to save the NHS yeah.

On the plus side whilst frantically hunting for old bank statements I found a voucher for an online knitting shop that I thought was lost forever! So I've now bought a swift (thing for winding yarn).

And I have signed up to be a research participant for the Gov Digital Service when they get round to making HMRC online actually usable. Thank me next year.
 
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RubyToogood said:
Seriously? You do all the calculations and the bloody thing can't even just take you to a checkout where the amount to pay is already filled in????
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You think that's bad? A couple of years ago if you wanted to pay it online you had to go to a completely separate thing called 'BillPay' that had its own entirely different complicated login process. That was usually when I started actually screaming.
 
today i have 2 sick kids :facepalm: but i called in babysitting so i've retrieved my numbers. writing them down and adding them up next :thumbs: glad i had a trial run last year with only half a year's numbers. iirc the rest is downhill. famous last words.
 
lazythursday said:
You think that's bad? A couple of years ago if you wanted to pay it online you had to go to a completely separate thing called 'BillPay' that had its own entirely different complicated login process. That was usually when I started actually screaming.
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Even now though the bits of the website look so drastically different and you sit there worrying you're in the wrong place and doing the wrong thing. My return isn't at all complicated and all I had to pay was NI, but it's still a nerve-wracking experience.

On another note, last year I gave him indoors 10% of my allowance, and realised he never told them when he changed his name when we got married, so his NI number and name don't match their records, so I had to put his old name down, and said "you must remember to change that."

Same again this year :facepalm:
 
lazythursday said:
You think that's bad? A couple of years ago if you wanted to pay it online you had to go to a completely separate thing called 'BillPay' that had its own entirely different complicated login process. That was usually when I started actually screaming.
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Yes I was particularly thrilled by the bit where it asked me about my PAYE earnings and I was able to look them up on a different area of the same website and enter them manually... :facepalm:
 
RubyToogood said:
Yes I was particularly thrilled by the bit where it asked me about my PAYE earnings and I was able to look them up on a different area of the same website and enter them manually... :facepalm:
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I've been Impressed in the past, when I've had to phone HMRC to tell them my "actual earnings" figures for self employment profit that I had already put in my tax return (which I'd filed early).
 
I'm close to finishing which equals pints tonight, if successful. I think I've fucked up my NI payments though. They used to be taken from my bank account automatically and then they stopped. I ticked some box that seemed to say "yes I'll pay for the NI payments" but in my haste to forget the whole experience I may have got it wrong.
 
I think you pay all the NI via the tax return now. The regular payments have stopped.

I didn't pay mine for years and spent months trying to get HMRC to just tell me how much I owed so I could pay it off, as the letters only ever had the latest bit owed on them. Impossible. Had to wait for them to put a debt collection agency on it in order to get a bloody figure out of them.
 
Bricking myself today because I couldn't work out how to fill out a return for some extra freelance earnings now that I'm PAYE, and was suddenly convinced I'd had to re-register last October (and didn't). In fact you don't have to, it's just really obscure as to how to start the return. Nice UI work there HMRC.

Thankfully I have now managed to contribute the cost of around 60% of a duck island to the public coffers.
 
wayward bob said:
done. last in? :D
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I'm in but I doubt you will be the last. Finally sent it in last night. I did it early Jan. Couldn't figure out why I was getting a big repayment so dithered about pressing the button. Remembered something. Added that it. Still got a few quid back but not as much as before. Bugger.
 
Wasn't completely confident I got it right and I do seem to have to pay more than I thought I should, so pressed send rather than pay more in penalties.....
 
editor said:
I've resolved to try and get some sort of basic accounting software and chip away at it throughout the year so I don't end up in another last minute frenzy of calculations on paper.

But then I say that every year...
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Not sure what you consider 'basic accounting software', nor do I know how complex your situation, so what I use may be more than you need, and too costly, but I fucking love xero, makes life so easy!

Pricing Plans for Small Business Accounting | Xero
 
editor said:
£120 a year is waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay too much for my humble needs.
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Fair enough, I only went for it when I had to go VAT registered, at £20 pm for me it saves loads of time, so makes it well worthwhile.
 
I've now discovered that what I've declared as my savings interest was not quite right by about £20s worth of tax (I panicked and requested a statement from the bank, which now it's turned up is calculated on a slightly different basis from the bits of paper I managed to scrape together at the 11th hour). I thought you were supposed to be able to amend a tax return and the help files agree, but the system won't actually let me in. Should I give up and not bother?
 
RubyToogood said:
I've now discovered that what I've declared as my savings interest was not quite right by about £20s worth of tax (I panicked and requested a statement from the bank, which now it's turned up is calculated on a slightly different basis from the bits of paper I managed to scrape together at the 11th hour). I thought you were supposed to be able to amend a tax return and the help files agree, but the system won't actually let me in. Should I give up and not bother?
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You can't amend it now the filing date has pasted.
 
editor said:
That's still more than I want to pay. My needs really are basic as I earn fuck all. There's some decent looking Android apps I'll look into.
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Many of my smaller clients with very straightforward affairs keep simple spreadsheets analysing their bank and cash transactions and sometimes listing their sales invoices. They could (and some do) download the csv files from their online banking as a starting point for their bank analyses.

Things may change with HMRC's MTD (Making Tax Digital) as they expect taxpayers to be using software to prepare the data for submission but the implementation of MTD keeps getting delayed so who knows when that's likely to happen. It also appears there may be "free" software when the times comes.
 
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