To ask if you have a self assessment tax bill of this, whether you must have earned a lot?

[Gennr]

Self assessment resulting in 70k worth of tax to pay by 31 jan 2025. This is just for the last tax year and nothing carried over etc. Surely this means actual earnings/income must be pretty high? I’m not good with this sort of thing.

If it’s all from income, then income will be about 3 times this.

But some may come from interest on savings or dividends. Or even Capital Gains tax if something valuable has been sold.

Yes, just asked Chat GPT - with several assumptions about NI, tax free allowances, etc - approx £190-200k to have a £70k tax liability.

@MereDintofPandiculation but even if from savings interest, is still must mean actual income of over 200k? Or am I wrong here?

If this is your tax bill, how can you know the calculation without knowing what it's based on? If it isn't your tax bill, why are you asking?

Income tax is based on profit, so if somebody's record keeping is poor and they haven't recorded their deductible expenses properly it doesn't necessarily mean they had a lot left over, regardless of what their turnover was. Earning a squillion quid isn't great if it cost you 1.2 squillion quid to do so and you don't have any way to prove it.

@OpalMaker thank you. So you’d be in receipt of circa 200k then have to pay 70k tax? Ie left with around 130k

@SocksAndTheCity its not mine.

Then why do you want to know? If you're trying to establish whether this person has a lot of money, their tax liability isn't going to tell you that.

@SocksAndTheCity well surely it gives an insight if that’s a tax bill for one year.

Anyone else’s curiosity piqued ? Why does OP want to know if it’s not her tax bill. And how does she know what the tax amount is ?

Yes, split between earned income and income from interest and dividends.
Unless there's CGT in the mix.

Why would it not give an indication, apart from the obvious that this is last year's income and they may now be out of work?

I imagine it's her soon-to-be-ex

@Rosscameasdoody i was told! I want to know as it impacts my perception a little and I feel uncomfortable

I have my suspicions pegged on a child maintenance thing.

Child maintenance no doubt

@MereDintofPandiculation thank you. Nothing been sold so I presume income from dividends which is what they said, but im amazed anyone can have dividends paying out that much

@Helixpoint if it was child maintenance, why would that be a bad thing? Surely we support women in receiving money to raise children?

Well if you've inherited properties and had to sell it in the same year, your tax bill could be this and your income less than 10k

@Helixpoint didn’t mean to sound aggressive there, I took the tone of your message to be a bit critical 🤦🏼‍♀️

Might be a one off where they disposed of a house or piece of land that wasn’t their main residence which had gone up in value a lot.

but yes in general it’s not unreasonable to think someone with that sort of tax bill is quite wealthy.

Absolutely, I hope whoever may or may not have deprived their child of proper support gets their comeuppance.

Honestly, the lack of thinking here is terrible sometimes. Maybe the OP is just nosey, maybe there's a partner swearing that he earned next to nothing last year and can't afford to put the hesting on or pay the nortgage, maybe it's an ex saying he can't afford child maintenance.

Some of it will be under payment from the current tax year and some payment on account towards the next tax year and it may not take into account payments paid on account from last year, so can look too high. It does sound like a lot and implies a lot of income from somewhere, but this year may be an exceptional year so doesn't necessarily mean a regular income that high. It could also have been over estimated, is the person concerned happy the amounts are correct?

I always get caught with extra payments because I don't have a lot of PAYE income, but nothing like that amount, and the amount I actually have to pay by January is always initially over estimated by the payment on account from last year.

Self assessment covers a lot of tax alongside income tax.

Normally most people pay income tax via PAYE. Some people - self employed, variable earnings, etc etc do it through the self assessment route.

It also covers capital gains tax, so for example if he'd sold a house that he was renting out capital gains tax would he due.

It wasn’t meant to be critical at all? If you have kids you should pay for them!