Self-assessment tax. £9k!!

[FlyingGreenFrog]

Hi, can anyone give me any advice (reassurance!) about self-assessment tax?

I’ve just submitted my self-assessment and it’s given me a bill of £9k! Plus an extra payment of £3.5k in June.

But I only earned £16k self-employed. I also briefly worked for a company earning about £3.5k. So a £9 tax bill on a salary of les than £20k seems insane?? It must be wrong mustn’t it?

I’m genuinely terrified here. Hadn’t expected it to be more than a couple of grand.

grateful for any help or insights!

The first £12,570 is tax free
Only pay tax above this amount

There is a box right at the end of the return where you can choose to defer payment for the next half of the year.

Sometimes they want a reason and mine used to be that I was decreasing my working hours. (Which was true.)

The language they use to defer the payment in advance is ' on account' (meaning they are in credit, not you, for future tax.)

I think you had added two zeros somewhere, or commas in the wrong places, where you have added the figures.
So(an example) instead of 3500,00 you have entered 35,000.00

Assuming the OP is doing a standard online tax return you don't type the numbers with commas iirc, it's actually quite hard to do it wrong if you have a straight forward situation as described

It was a suggestion.
It is easy to put figures in incorrectly, adding more zeros.

😂A qualified SATR agent? There is no such thing!

It depends on what else you declared in your tax return - interest on savings and dividends?
Apologies if this has already been mentioned - I haven’t had time to RTFT.

What so you mean qualified SATR agent ? What institute are you regulated by?

I’m a chartered accountant who specialises in tax and happy to have a look if you PM me

Ok, not sure who said it but you were right - it has exactly doubled by self-employed income! It was a glitch!!

So I deleted it and did it again and it’s come out at around £2k!

thanks so much!

Well done

Make sure you have all your allowable expenses in

Phew!

I'm with the ICB. Usually this only takes the qualification up to Trial Balance, but I did several stand-alone qualifications, one being qualified to do SA and I have an Agent services account with HMRC. I'm happy to sent my certificates to the couple of you that have got arsey. All I was trying to do was help someone out for free, as they looked like they were panicking about something easily sorted. What an absolute cow I am right 🤣

Appreciate you were trying to help, but there is no standalone SA qualification, and anyone can set themselves up as an agent with HMRC.

Have you put down pension payments as a deduction?
Have you mistakenly put expenses as an income?
It's so easy to make a small error on these forms.

Your expenses and outgoings are very low indeed @FlyingGreenFrog
Ae you aware of all you can claim for?

If you work from home, you can claim for heating, council tax, percentage of broadband use, percentage of your mobile phone use, paper, ink, and more. There are specific details around all of these (based on a percentage of space used in your home) and it might be worth while either employing an accountant to talk you through it, or using some of the guides online.

That's definitely not right - assuming you've not submitted it so start again and reread everything. I recently had an online chat with HMRC who were really helpful so that might not be a bad place to start for some help.

Phew!

Call and speak to them. If you don’t get to the bottom of it, it’s worth paying an account a few hours to sort it out as this is definitely not right. Something has gone wrong on the self assessment.

I was going to say the same! I’m a Chartered Tax Advisor (CIOT and ATT) and in over 20 years have never heard of qualified SATR agent!

You need help immediately. Go to a tax adviser or the citizen's advice bureau. They'll probably tell you to go to a tax adviser. Never, ever, ever send anything to HMRC tax office without a photocopy or phone image of every single page you submit. (You need this, when you have to query things and are getting no help.) And because all questionaires are complex, nobody you speak to in the tax office can give you any advice (or gives a damn), however pleasant they are on the phone. They're always pleasant on the phone. Seriously, you made a stupid mistake somewhere (probably, maybe not), and you will be hounded, unless you get professional advice. Start at citizen's advice bureau, because they usually have a solicitor who comes in once a week - but call every helpline you can find. Seriously once I rented out my flat to go to uni as mature student and declared it as taxable income. I filled in the final year, declared I was moving back in. It took a year to sort that out, even though I had a photocopy of final page that ticked that one box for final year and moving back into my flat (100% their mistake). Once my husband accummulated a £17K tax refund over 3 years - he so understands this stuff - but it took 3 years to get that cheque from them. Get help. Also call HMRC. They're always nice on the phone.

Glad you worked out where the error was. As a pp said, please be sure to claim the trade allowance on your self employment income as your expenses are less than £1k it is better to claim that than your actual expenses. Will bring the bill down a bit more too.

Sounds definitely like an error, you need to look at the calculation sheet and see what figures are in it.

I opt for the £1000 expenses allowance without needing to provide evidence. Might save you money in the future.

Also glitch on here as checked op posts before replying and didn't see them.