Self-employed Brits — have you got your tax return in yet?

Surely you mean Adam Hart Davies? Unless the co-author of The Darker Proof has branched out into voiceover work, of course.

YYYYYYYYYYYYYYYAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAOW. This is complicated.

oh shit i knew there was something else i had to do today

*sticks head in sand again*

It always hurts the first time.

i basically have no idea what the fuck i'm doing here - what any of these forms mean, what forms i'm supposed to have kept, what i'm supposed to have kept track of. gonna just shove everything in an envelope and throw it at my parents' accountant, i can't fucking cope.

I am all set up for 2009-10 with records, etc., but I found out a couple of weeks back that I need to do one for 2008-09 thanks to the company I am a partner in beginning trading that year, even though I didn't officially become self-employed until 2009-10. I wasn't keeping records back then. This is agony.

I am all set up for 2009-10 with records, etc.

Counting down to this statement being demonstrated to be bullshit in 12 months...

It was even more agony earlier in the week when I thought the deadline was 31 December, not 31 January. All in a box and shipped to an accountant is the only possible way to go about this.

Phew, this post's been up for a minute and no-one's corrected me.

this entire charade is soooo discriminatory against the disorganised :(

haha

i honestly still have no idea exactly what i'm meant to be keeping records of. no one fucking explains anything, why isn't this taught in schools?

Thanks to the date cock-up, I don't have an accountant for 2008-09. Doing this myself on the self-assessment site. It's fairly straightforward for me that year, but 2009-10 is going to be a nightmare featuring dividends, pensions, salaries payed in three countries, etc. such a pain when my taxable income is no way going to be over the threshold for UK income tax. accountant is my man.

lex, http://www.hmrc.gov.uk/SA/record-keeping.htm

yeah i've seen that, it loses me when it starts talking about p45s and p60s and p11s and what the fuck are any of those? i don't remember ever having seen any

do you have an employer?

certificates for any Taxed Award Schemes

i just have no idea what those are or whether i received any or whether i threw the information in the bin without thinking. no idea. none.

if you income is entirely from self-employment i don't think you get them.

p45s and p60s, that is.

i had an employer until the end of 08 (but was also kind of self-employed before that as well?) (i honestly can't remember if i ever got round to declaring myself actually self-employed over the past 12 months. i know i meant to!)

p60 is like a summary of your year in pay and taxation you get from an employer at the end of the tax year. you'll probably only get it if yours is the kind of employer who runs a payroll and has a PAYE reference. you'll get one for each employer you have who does this. (e.g. i am semi-fucked because i've lost one of mine.)

apparently i should have got a p45 or p60 when i left my last full-time employer - i don't remember getting this and have no idea where it might be

write/phone employer and ask for a p60. they will be able to make one.

yeah.

give them a call. their accounts department deal with this shit all the time.

if you can't get hold of the p45 itself, then the numbers it repeats should be identical to those on your final pay slip.

I think the info on a P45 or a P60 is stored somewhere on the Inland Rev's computers if you contact them and ask them to be nice.

I'm sure there used to be a reasonable threshold which if you earned below you didn't need to submit full accounts and the Revenue kind of more or less took you at your word.

ah so we end up in the same place with two lost forms

honestly what stupid system relies on people KEEPING AND NOT LOSING FORMS FOR A YEAR - the longest i can keep something without losing it is 3 weeks

xps

xp, there is a threshold, but not if you're a member of a partnership.

I worked for the IR briefly, many years ago, but I remember v. little.

Not self-employed but since moving to the US my husband & I have each sent the HMRC two very straightforward forms. They then sent me a letter (by mail, despite me asking several times to email) asking for a p45 from a company I've never worked for.
They then sent my husband by mail a blank copy of the form he'd already filled out, with a return envelope, and no letter with explanation, instructions or anything. Is it some kind of code?

god i fucking suck at this

amirite?

"I am all set up for 2009-10 with records, etc."

Counting down to this statement being demonstrated to be bullshit in 12 months...

― caek, Monday, December 28, 2009 12:05 AM (1 year ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

*sad laugh*

hm when does a tax return go in again? I ended up having to do one last year.

31 jan

NEARLY THERE

^^

don't think they sent me a form

Phew, turns out the one I did last year was only in April and was for 09-10, nice & early (I had a big incentive though, they owed me $$$$)

don't think they sent me a form

― moholy-nagl (history mayne), Monday, January 3, 2011 9:15 PM (10 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

they don't. it's on you.

A friend of mine ended up getting fined for not paying his tax and not keeping up payments of arrears. With fines and missed arrears payments, the most he owed at one point was £20k. He tried to blame his accountant, but failed as he'd not been paying his accountant either. The man's a fool!

they used to send forms!

xp - that could so easily have been me, this shit still does my head in (and i don't even have to do the form myself, just do basic tracking of expenses and invoices to send to my accountant, which...i still fail at every year)

also at what point are people generally, like, taught how to do this? i do not remember that life lesson.

I think algebra and religious education took it's place.

and grammar (sorry)

I'm tired and full of a cold, forgive me :(

oh my GODDDDD

every fucking year

i have an accountant and this is still the most stressful thing i do every year

i tried really hard to keep everything organised and in one place this year and what do i find, ONE FUCKING BANK STATEMENT MISSING. where? where? where the FUCK is it? why do i even bother trying when this happens anyway?

also why can't i look it up online now? is there an actual reason for this or is it just banks being cunts again? if it's like last year i'm going to have to pay them money and they'll take about a week to send it to me.

and hmrc have sent me a terrifying-looking thing that says i owe them lots of money which SURELY cannot be the case because wtf could it be, and my accountant can't understand it either, except he can't log in to something to check because apparently there was yet another form i was meant to sign and send back to him and i have no idea what anyone is referring to or where anything is and every fucking form looks exactly the fucking same and i'm about to have an aneurysm.