Oh God have I really screwed up?

[wasabipeanut]

I went self employed in February last year and registered as such with the HMRC. Been paying class 2 NICS and now on maternity leave for which I am getting MA.

Should I have completed a tax return? They haven't written to me or anything and I earn under the threshold anyway but have I made a massive mistake and am now going to be fined hugely?

Am panicking and baby is due in 3 weeks.

not sure if you need to or not but you have til jan 31st to do tx return online

ring tax office and they should say yay or nay

Have you spoken to them on the helpline?

They are usually incredibly helpful IMHO.

The self-assessment tax return due by 31st Jan us for the period ended 5 April 2009, so I suspect you won't need to file one - did you have much income in the Feb/Mar period?

If you're under the threshold, fess up & file now, they are very unlikely to penalise you. They have much bigger fish 2 fry.

On the phone now on hold!

well done

couple of years ago i got a man on the helpline to talk me through the whole online form while i filled it in, bless him

Thanks for quick replies. My income in Feb and March was next to zero - it took me about 4 months to find any freelance work but they wouldn't know that yet?

Spoke to a nice lady - she is sending me a tax return form and says I have until 31st March to complete it.

Phew. I have literally 2 pieces of work I have to declare because they fell into that tax year so I guess it shouldn't be too complicated. I have my P14 from my old job which I did regular PAYE on.

Or am I being naieve?

oh hurrah

actually when i was self employed i think i started around march of that year. all i had to declare on my tax return was £42 expenditure and £52 income. reams and reams of forms and i needed to fill in about 1 question, iirc

glad it is sorted

Thanks. Started cacking myself about fines worth thousands when I owed about £100.

I am a worrier.

I have always found the tax and VAT people really, really helpful and...kind. I have to say that it wasn't what I anticipated.

wasabipeanut - it might be worth checking if you can do a short tax return. a couple of years ago I did one piece of freelance work (in addition to my salried paye job) and they told me that if it was under a certain amount I could do a much shorter version