February 22nd, 2016
Are you late filing your 2014/15 tax return?
So, you’ve still not filed your tax return for the year ended 5 April 2015. As you are probably painfully aware this should have been filed by 31 January 2016. You may already have received notification of your £100 late filing penalty but is that all it’s going to cost you?
If you were 1 second late filing your tax return for 2014/15 then an automatic fixed penalty of £100 will be applied to your account even if you have no tax to pay or you have paid your tax on time.
If you pay all the tax due by the end of February 2016 and file your tax return by 30 April 2016 then there will be no further penalties, however, take heed of the following dates:
29 February 2016 – if you’ve not paid all your tax due for 2014/15 by this date then HMRC will slap a penalty on you of 5% the tax outstanding at this date
30 April 2016 – if you’ve not filed your tax return by this date then you’ll start getting hit with £10 per day fines up to a maximum of £900. This is in addition to the fixed penalty.
31 July 2016 – still not filed? A penalty of £300 or 5% of tax due (whichever is higher) will be added to your account – still not paid? An additional 5% of the tax outstanding at that date will be added too.
31 January 2017 – filing still outstanding? A further penalty of £300 or 5% of tax due (whichever is higher) will be applied. In serious cases you may even be asked to pay 100% of the tax due instead. And still not paid? A further 5% of tax outstanding will be charged.
Can I appeal against these penalties?
There are some grounds for appeal. The most likely is that you have a good excuse for not filing. HMRC give some specific examples of “Reasonable excuse” see here .
I just can’t pay my tax – is there anything that I can do to stop the late payment charges being applied?
If you are having real difficulties making a payment, the best thing you can do is contact HMRC and ask for them to consider allowing you to enter a Time To Pay Arrangement. If you do this before the late payment penalties start being imposed then late payment penalties may be waived.
If you are worried about filing your return late or not being able to pay your tax bill on time, please contact us and we can try and help you with a plan of action.
