HELP - self assessment registration rejecting?!

[PartridgeJoan]

I’m at my wits end. I took on some extra work last tax year which pushed me into the higher income limit for child benefit so now I need to do a self assessment.

I’ve tried registering for it four times now and it keeps rejecting and I just don’t understand why?!

The latest reason was that the form wasn’t complete, but that isn’t possible.

Each rejection takes over a week to get to me so now I’m panicking that this is the last chance to get it right before I’m slapped with a hefty fine. Can someone talk me through the registration like I’m 5 please?!

or has this happened to anyone else?

TIA

For context I am not self employed (the extra work was through my current employer) which is why I haven’t registered before

Are you trying to set up your on line account?

I had this and there was an issue with the layout of my address that didn't match what was already on the system. I rang and someone worked out what it was over the phone and resolved it then. It was very frustrating though. I feel your pain!

I don't know why it's getting rejected but I would write a chronology of everything you've done to date and email it with your details to the tax office. It's possible you're registering late (assuming it's for last tax year you should be registering in October I think?) but I don't see why it would still reject it. So email and be persistent ringing so you can show you tried. I feel for you it's really stressful the first time you do it

Yeah - falling at the first hurdle!

This is really useful to know - I have a letter and number in our address so it could be this! Thanks

Definitely ring them, they are generally really helpful over the phone!

Mine rejected at first because they had the wrong spelling of my name, despite me paying taxes my whole adult life! Just one letter but I would never have known had I not contacted them.

Be prepared for a mega wait on the phone. It took me an hour on Wednesday. Which was surprisingly better than Tuesday as I couldn't even get in the queue to speak to a human.

I also have a letter and number in my address! Maybe it was that!

The address "mis match" is very common with both HMRC and Companies House.

They're doing automated cross checks against other databases, and just churning out rejection letters if it doesn't match exactly, even down to number of spaces between words and numbers, punctuation, etc.

So, yes, check you enter exactly what and how each line is written as per the Royal Mail database for starters.

Very annoying that they don't do a "human" sanity check before the automatic rejection.