Does anyone know the penalties?
I’ve already filed my 2017-2018 tax return.
I owe around £5000 due 31st January, £1660 of which is on account.
We are buying a house (ftb) and have worked to save 10% deposit and have found a house we like, our offer is likely to be accepted.
If all goes well our current savings and the next 3 months of savings will cover the deposit, moving costs and my tax bill.
I’ve been saving about 65% of my income each month so theoretically should be fine to cover everything (we’ll scrimp at Christmas- don’t have any children yet so that’s something!)
But if there are any hidden costs eg the boiler breaks down , my income falls with the move of house, we will struggle.
Forseeing this I ran up HRMC and asked if I could potentially set up a payment plan to pay half of the tax owed at the end of February. The woman said no they’d expect me to be able to pay at end of January. I said if in worse case scenario, I couldn’t, what would the late payment penalty be if I had to pay a few weeks later? She said it’s 3% per annum on tax owed, broke down into a daily charge. That seems verrrrrry low I thought, and I worked that out as 41p interest per day - that can’t be right surely?!? She said yes but I don’t trust her too much.
Hopefully we’ll not have to spend any money (quite happy to scrimp and we have a couple bits of furniture already and the house doesn’t need anything doing immediately we don’t think) but if I end up not having £5000 in my account by 31st January, would it really only be 41p per day for me to pay extra? And would it go on my credit report?
Thanks for any experience!!!