For some years now, the penalty for filing your personal tax return after the 31 January deadline has been £100. If you've no tax to pay, that's been reduced to nil. Many people have therefore felt little or no need to meet the deadline.
For the tax year ended 5 April 2011, the penalties are much harsher if a return is submitted after 31 January 2012. Firstly, the £100 won't be reduced at all if there's little or no tax payable. Secondly, once your return is three months late a further penalty of £10 a day will also kick in. On top of that, if you're six months late or more there are further penalties - potentially up to 100% of the tax due.
Most of our customers are really efficient and get us the information and documents we need in good time, and so we're already submitting plenty of tax returns for last year. But we always get calls from some potential clients in January, prompted by the impending deadline, and it seems pretty likely that in January 2012 the increased punishment for lateness will mean more of those than usual. And for firms that are used to doing a lot of their personal tax work in January, with the knowledge that a few returns slipping into February is not disastrous, this time round it could be much more fraught.
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