Tax Returns will start
dropping through letter boxes in early April. And this year they've
been completely redesigned, and the deadlines for sending them in
have changed too.
First the deadlines.
If you want to fill in the traditional paper tax return then you
have until 31 October 2008. In previous years you had until 30
September if you wanted the Revenue to work out your tax payments
for you, but if you did the calculations yourself you had until 31
January.You still have until
31 January if you file your return online, either using the general
online system, or if your accountant files it, using the tax
agents' online system.
If you've been used to
filling in a tax return you'll notice that this year your form
looks radically different. I've received a communication from
Patrick Linford at HMRC (who has the glorious job title of Self
Assessment Process Owner!) and he assures us that the redesign will
make it "easier for our customers to understand and
complete."
As before everybody
gets the main return and you then get supplementary pages for
self-employment, employment, or property income if you need them.
There are also more obscure extra pages available for reporting
such things as foreign income, capital gains, share options and
income from being a minister of religion or Lloyds
name.
The main return (sent
to everybody who gets a tax return) now comes in three
sections:
A core Tax
Return with all the more common questions - your name, address,
date of birth, interest on savings accounts, dividends, pensions,
charitable giving, and if you're due a tax refund where do you want
it sent. This form is only 6 pages long compared to the 10 pages of
last year's form.
A 4 page
Additional information form. Although this is sent to
everybody you only have to fill it in if you have some less common
types of income or tax reliefs (interest from gilts, stock
dividends, employee share schemes or lump sums and compensation
payments), or if you can claim extra allowances because you or your
spouse (or civil partner) were born before 1935. in most cases you
probably won't need to complete this form and you can bin
it.
Finally everybody
will get a 1 page form entitled Giving your tax repayment to
charity. If you want HMRC to send your tax refund direct to a
charity then fill this in. Otherwise ignore it.Escorts, and other
sex-workers, are invariably self- employed, so you'll also have to
fill in the self- employment pages. Again these have been
simplified.
If your business
turnover was below £64,000 (which also happened to be the VAT
registration threshold last year) then you can complete a form
called Self- employment (short). This is only 2 pages long
compared the old form which ran to 4 pages. The form asks for the
following information, and you'll find advice on this site for what
to include in each section
Description of your
business - this will be the same as the description you gave when
you first registered, for example escort, executive stress counsellor
or therapist.
The date you make
your accounts up to. That's probably going to be 5 April 2008, or
31 March 2008, although you can use a different date if you really
must. Here's a fucq about it.
If your turnover is
below £30,000 then the form is even easier to fill in. You
don't have to split your allowable expenses into 9 different
categories: you can simply put your total expenses into a single
box.The bad news is that
if your turnover is more than £64,000 you have to fill in a
form called Self- employment (full) which runs to 6 pages.
I'm not going to run through this form because if you're earning
that much you should be VAT registered and probably already be
using an accountant.
If you're also
employed - it doesn't matter whether it's full or part-time - you
will also have to fill in an Employment supplement. This only runs
to 1 page and it's simply a case of copying the details from your
P60 or P45, and your P11d if you received taxable benefits from
your employer. You need to complete a separate form for each
employment, so if you changed jobs during 2007/8 you'll have to
fill in 2 forms.
1. Do-it-Yourself
