Beat The January Rush and Save!

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Beat The January Rush and Save 5%TaxFile are offering a 5% reduction for clients who can submit their accounts to us before December 21st this year. This helps both of us — you receive a 5% reduction in your bill and it eases the rush in the New Year, our busiest time.

For example you could use this opportunity to reduce our charges for help with your self-assessment tax return submission if you’re self-employed, or for help with your CIS tax refund application if you’re a sub-contractor working in the construction industry, or if you’re one of our many clients who simply require tax advice and accountancy-related assistance from time to time.

Don’t delay – this discount is only available for a few weeks so call us on 020 8761 8000 or call into our Tulse Hill branch in SE21 for a chat and we’ll be delighted to help. You can also email us by clicking here or alternatively you can make an appointment with one of our tax agents here.

Airbnb in HMRC crack-down on hidden income from renting out rooms

Hosts renting out rooms to be targeted by HMRC

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Airbnb in HMRC crack-down on hidden income from renting out roomsHosts who rent out a spare room could soon see themselves being straddled with an unexpected tax bill if companies like ‘Airbnb’ are forced to share data with UK authorities.

Airbnb, the website that allows you to list, find or rent a room in a private residence, has announced that it now has to share details of its users’ rental profits with the tax authorities in Ireland. Airbnb was already required to share this information in America but, until now, has not been required to do so in the UK. However, HMRC are cracking down on unpaid tax from hidden income and this may result in companies like Airbnb soon having to share details of income earned by its UK customers.

Airbnb, which has headquarters in Ireland and America, say they are not currently governed by the same legalities in the UK and so will not be reporting income automatically in the UK but, as part of its crack-down on unpaid taxes, HMRC has said it will be approaching intermediaries like Airbnb for data on their clients. Read more

George Osborne

Summer Budget 2015 – Key Tax Takeaways

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The Summer Budget was announced last week and in this blog post we’ll take a look at only those changes which will affect ordinary taxpayers and SMEs.

In his opening remarks, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, George Osborne, promised:

A Budget … to keep moving us from a low wage, high tax, high welfare economy; to the higher wage, lower tax, lower welfare country.

So, taking each of those goals in turn …

Higher Minimum Wages

With regard to the higher wages promise, Osborne announced that there would be a new National Living Wage of £7.20 per hour from April 2016 for those aged over 25 and over, rising to more than £9 per hour by the year 2020.

Lower Tax

With regard to the lower tax promise, the Personal Allowance (the amount people can earn before paying any tax) will increase – as anticipated – from £10,600 in the financial year 2015-16 to £11,000 in 2016-17. A longer term plan is to increase this still further to £12,500 by 2020. The ultimate ambition is pass a law to make sure that those working 30 hours a week and earning the National Minimum Wage will pay no tax whatsoever, although clearly this will need further clarification in due course.

Dividend tax will also be reformed. Here the existing dividend tax credit (this reduces tax paid on dividends from shares) will be replaced by a new £5,000 tax-free allowance on income from shares from April 2016 and this will be available to all taxpayers. To offset the cost of this to the Exchequer, those with more significant dividend income will see an increase in the tax rate they pay.

Inheritance tax will also be subject to changes from 2017-18. The idea is to allow individuals to each have a ‘family home allowance’ which they can pass on to their children or grandchildren, tax-free, when they die. This allowance will be added to the existing Inheritance Tax threshold currently set at £325k and will potentially allow property up to the value of £1m to be passed down from 2020-21 (see table below). For those with estates valued over £2m the allowance will be gradually withdrawn.

This is how the effective Inheritance Tax thresholds will look in 2020-21: Read more

Tax Return 2014

STILL haven’t filed your tax return? You owe £410 in fines & counting!

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If you STILL haven’t filed your tax return despite the end of May being almost upon us, you’ll owe £410 in HMRC penalties by the end of this week. Continue to throw money down the drain at the rate of £10 extra per day thereafter if you still don’t submit your return.

As we explained in our last post, missing the original January 31 deadline meant an automatic HMRC penalty of £100 (on top of tax owed, of course) at that time.
But, with the additional penalty of £10 per extra day extra having been piling up since 1st May, it means you’ll need to add £310 to the original £100 penalty by the end of this week. Carry on like this for yet another month and by the end of June you’ll owe a whopping £710. It doesn’t end there — by the end of July it’ll be worse still as there is an additional £300 penalty levied by HMRC. Yes, that’s on top of the daily £10 fine and the original £100 penalty, meaning that the total penalty will then be £1300 as a bare minimum (it can be worse still if HMRC deem your case to be particularly serious). All this simply because your tax return is late.

All these penalties are in addition to the actual tax you owe!

Don’t forget … even if you owe no tax, you still need to submit your tax return so aren’t immune to the penalties. Take another look at the full post for more detail or, better still, contact us here at Taxfile urgently if you’d like our professional help in filing your tax return on your behalf — and minimising the penalties you’ll need to pay to HMRC. Call 0208 761 8000, click here to contact us or book an appointment with one of our tax advisors here and we’d be delighted to help. We are based in Tulse Hill, South London.

Tax Return 2014

Still Haven’t Filed Your Tax Return? Expect a Nasty Bill from HMRC!

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Tax Return 2014If you still haven’t filed your tax return for the financial year up to 5 April 2014 you can expect the penalties from HMRC to begin racking up daily — and potentially very significantly — starting from Friday 1 May.

If you missed the 31 January Tax Return deadline …

If you missed the 31 January 2015 deadline for tax returns, you already owe HMRC £100 in fines on top of any tax you owe. If you don’t owe any tax whatsoever, HMRC still require a tax return from you, plus that £100 in penalties.

If you still haven’t filed your return by 1 May …

From 1 May 2015 you can also expect a £10 daily penalty to kick in, on top of the £100 fine above, up to a maximum addition for the period of £900 (90 days) extra. But it gets even worse…

If you STILL haven’t filed your return by 30 July …

After the 90 day period beginning on May 1st, if you STILL haven’t filed your tax return you’ll receive a further £300 penalty (or 5% of the tax due; whichever is highest) plus a possible additional fine equivalent to 100% (or more) of the tax due, depending on how serious the case is.

Each of these individual penalties is in addition to the preceding ones.

So, to conclude, if by 30 July 2015 you STILL haven’t filed your latest tax return you will be in for a minimum penalty of an incredible £1300.00 and that’s in addition to the tax you owe. Also, Read more

George Osborne

Highlights from the Chancellor’s Budget, 18 March 2015

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Along with some encouraging news about the UK economy, some interesting new measures were announced in the Chancellor’s Budget yesterday and below we highlight those which we feel will directly impact the majority of UK taxpayers:

  • As widely forecast, the tax-free allowance will increase. The amount people can earn before paying tax will rise to £10,800 from 2016-17 and then to £11,000 from 2017-18. At the same points in time, higher earners will also receive a two stage increase to the threshold at which they start to pay a 40% rate of tax, with the threshold increasing to £43,300 by 2017-18.
  • The Chancellor also announced a brand new Personal Savings Allowance whereby the first £1,000 of interest (£500 for higher rate taxpayers) will be tax tree. This new allowance will kick in from April 2016 and will take 95% of taxpayers out of savings tax completely. (Fact Sheet available here).
  • Another new scheme announced was the introduction of a new ‘Help to Buy ISA’ aimed at prospective first time buyers. This fairly generous scheme means that the Government will chip in up to £50 extra per month (up to a ceiling of £3,000) when an eligible saver saves up to £200 per month towards their first home. (Fact Sheet available here).
  • In another ISA reform, savers will now be able to withdraw money from a new Flexible ISA and deposit it back later in the same financial year without losing any of their usual ISA tax benefits. £15,240 will be able to be put into this re-styled savings vehicle. Read more
Tax return help & accounting advice for taxi drivers, cabbies, cab firms, couriers, limos and private hire firms. We're accountants in Tulse Hill, South London, SE21.

Missed the Tax Return Deadline?

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[Updated 3 February 2020]: If you missed the deadline for submission of your tax return to HMRC (that was 12 midnight on Saturday 31 January) here’s what you can expect in terms of a fine:

Table of penalties showing fines if you are late submitting your self-assessment tax return

In case you didn’t realise, you still had to submit a tax return even if you did not owe any tax and the longer you leave it, the more it will cost you — as you can see in the table above. Alternatively, use this excellent estimation tool to work out your exact penalty at any given point in time. Not sure if you even need to submit a Self Assessment tax return? No problem; there’s a tool for that too (here).

Statistically speaking, women seem to send in their returns on time more often than men; 18 to 20 year olds of either sex are the very worst with around 11% of them sending in their returns late in recent years, while those over 65 seem to be statistically the most reliable of all, with only around 1½% of them having filed tax returns late. We’ll have to wait and see how it panned out this year when the figures are in.

Taxfile are here for you if you need to get your tax return sorted out whether you’re on time or not – but the earlier the better if you’re to minimise any penalty from HMRC. We are professional accountants and tax advisors, are based in South London, and will help to get your tax affairs in order with minimal fuss. We will ensure that all your figures are correct so that you pay only the right amount of tax – no more, and no less. For professional tax help contact us or book an appointment on-line.

Tax Deadline

You have only HOURS left to submit your Tax Return!

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Tax Return DeadlineYou’re running out of time to submit your tax return and have just HOURS left! We are here to help you fill in and submit your self assessment tax returns to HMRC on Saturday 31st (by appointment only, 9-1pm) so come and see us quickly or you may miss the HMRC deadline. If you do miss it, you’ll get an automatic fine of £100 minimum – and it could get significantly worse (up to £1,600) if you continue to delay.

It doesn’t matter if you have zero tax to pay – you still need to submit your tax return on time. You also need to have paid HMRC any tax due for the 2013-14 financial year. So don’t miss your last chance to get our professional help with filing of your tax return!

ACT NOW and contact us on 020 8761 8000 or book an appointment online.

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Online banking may save you money!

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Online banking can save you money on your accounting costsDo you have online banking? Sending us downloaded statement information straight from your online banking means we can more easily import the data into our system and check for expenses and income which might otherwise have been overlooked. It can also fill in the gaps where you are missing receipts or invoices. This simple service could therefore save both time and money! Most online banking platforms allow you to export this information, for example as a CSV file, and this format is perfect for our accounting system.

Don’t have online banking? No problem! We also have a new system where we can scan in your paper statements straight into our ‘Bankstream’ accounting platform, making analysis faster and easier.

Either way, ask us for further information or, better still, send us a sample download of a typical month’s bank data (or Read more

Tax bomb

Avoid Significant HMRC Penalties – file your tax return on time!

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File your tax return in time or face severe fines[UPDATED AUGUST 2020] Did you know that you get an automatic £100 minimum penalty if you file your Self Assessment tax return (or pay any tax owed) even one day late? After 3 months you can add £10 per day extra to that fine (up to 90 days/£900 max) and after 6 months it gets significantly worse. And remember that you need to file your return on time even if you don’t owe any tax, or if you have already paid it! Latest indications are that there are also no warnings given by HMRC. See the table below for the detail.

Late return penalties by HMRC

So our message is simple: don’t file late, and don’t pay late! Taxfile are here to help you, of course. We know Self Assessment Tax Returns back to front and we can help you file accurately, and on time. If you’re late, we can help to sort things out quickly and so keep any HMRC penalties to a minimum.

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