April 10th, 2013
How to get a £1,000 fine for submitting your tax return in April
If you have a tax return for 2011/12 still outstanding then it’s possible to get yourself landed with a £1,000 bill – just for sending it in late this month.
The deadline for submitting a tax return was 31 January 2013 but this only applies to tax returns submitted online. If you want to submit a paper tax return then the deadline was 3 months earlier – 31 October 2012. What this means is that if you submit a paper tax return in April you’ll get a £100 penalty for submitting after 31 October AND a daily penalty of £10 per day for every day after 31 January 2013 (when a paper return is more than three months late). Leave it to the end of April and your fine will be £1,000. Leave it until after then and you can add another £300 or 5% of the tax due – whichever is higher.
Of course, you can save a fortune just by submitting your tax return online.
You won’t be surprised to learn that if you do get a penalty for submitting a paper return then you can’t put this right by then submitting a return online!
