Can I choose to pay more tax than I owe?

[splendidpickle]

Sorry if this sounds like a completely ridiculous question. I have asked my accountant but I didn’t get a response that actually answered my question, they’re not generally that good at answering questions.
So I received my draft tax return before Christmas and I had no tax to pay. I have a very low income but rent out a flat we used to live in. I think because the mortgage rate went up so much, this year the financial relief for the mortgage interest seems to be so high that I have zero tax liability.
I have some regular charity direct debits where I have ticked the gift aid box, and also, I just generally feel a bit weird about not being a tax payer.
I thought I could just ask my accountant to claim less tax relief so that I actually have a small tax bill. Can I do this or will hmrc at some point just realise I have overpaid and give me a refund?

Yes, I do this regularly:

www.gov.uk/guidance/voluntary-payments-donations-to-government

Thank you, I didn't realise you could do that.
I'm not sure that's the same as being a taxpayer though as it's a different type of payment rather than through hmrc.

You can pay some of my tax if you’d like? 😂

Why do you want to pay more tax of you don't owe it?

Yes you can ask your accountant not to claim all your allowable expenses if you want. HMRC will have no way of knowing you have done this. Not sure why you'd do this though. Why not claim what you're entitled to and give it to charity?

On the gift aid thing, this will never be followed up so I'd just leave it and don't tick the box in future.

You should aim to minimise your taxes!

As for Gift Aid, you shouldn't check this box if you pay no tax.

Why on earth would you want to do that 😂

I can see why you might feel a bit odd having no tax bill as such, but we all pay taxes of various kinds all the time, whether it's council tax, or VAT on things we buy, or whatever.

I'd gently suggest putting the money you're contemplating donating to the government aside in a high-interest bank account, to save for a future year's tax bill (or indeed just generally to help your own financial security).

If you haven't paid enough tax to cover your gift aid donations then your tax calculation should include a charge for you to cover that. If it doesn't then your tax return is wrong.

And yes, HMRC do pursue it.

Wouldn’t you rather donate towards a local food bank or woman’s aid than the government?

Too much tax relief 🤣
If you don’t make more than £12,570 in a year you don’t pay tax, I don’t know why you would want to pay tax when you haven’t earned enough

If you have already ticked the Gift Aid box when you are a taxpayer, they continue to claim it in future. That's the situation the OP is in.

Don't pay more tax! Are you crazy? If you want to donate money give it a cause that you support. The rich need to be paying the tax.

Please don't donate your hard earned cash to the government. You don't see the royal family or MPs asking to pay more tax. You will regret it in the future when the system works against you at some point at your expense. You get no thanks for going above and beyond.

What a lovely person you are though. Dont let the system take advantage of your lovely nature.

She can write to the company to say that she is no longer a tax payer.

Yes I know. But she doesn't want to do that, she wants the charity or whoever it is to continue to benefit from Gift Aid, which is why she wants to choose to pay enough tax so they can recover it. Hence the thread.

Well, that's silly.

I get where you’re coming from, OP: I paid the Gift Aid on my charity donations for several years when I wasn’t earning enough to pay income tax. There’s a section of the self assessment form where you declare how much you’ve donated with Gift Aid included & then they’ll calculate how much you owe. Like you, I didn’t want to tell the charities they couldn’t claim the Gift Aid so I preferred to pay it myself (I’m earning more now so it’s no longer an issue). It does mean you need to know how much you’ve donated but mine were all monthly direct debits: what you would do about random one-off payments I’m not sure unless you’ve been careful to keep records.

Not really the point of the thread but FYI your mortgage interest rate going up won’t affect your overall tax position as the relief is always 20% of the mortgage interest (assuming you’re lower rate taxpayer which it sounds like you are) which directly offsets any tax paid.

Charities mainly claim GA monthly and HMRC pay this claim without checking all the 1000s of contributors’ accounts.
HMRC will then ask for it back if they’ve paid for you out of your tax, but you didn’t pay enough. In reality few PAYG taxpayers or non taxpayers get chased for this right now, though they can be, but it’s obvious from a SA so you will have to pay the GA. But I’m thinking that will be ok with you, as you want to pay something.

Have you included the gift aid donations on your return? If not, you need to as this might generate a tax charge.

To explain, if you've gift aided things but at the end of the year you haven't actually paid enough tax, your self assessment will include a charge to cover the tax you needed to have paid.

When I have overpaid – which I often do as I go along as I’m taking money out of my business - I get an automatic refund at the end of the year. So if you really want to pay more tax (are you mad??!) you’ll have to find some other mechanism. Why not give it directly to a food bank or a charity?

I was in that position once and got charged extra tax in my tax return. I had an accountant at that point so don't know how automatic it was.

You do realise you are not paying tax because you didn’t earn much? And you could have no payment this year because you paid too much on balance? And may have extra to pay this year to balance as well?

Thank you. I have never bothered declaring any charity donations of the form from the accountants as I assumed that was just for higher rate taxpayers to claim tax relief. I think I might need to give them all that info and hopefully that sorts it out.