CONGRATULATIONS TO OUR COMPLIANCE TEAM 

Our compliance team successfully filed all our 31 January self-assessment tax return ahead of the filing deadline.  Another tax return season completed, but its amazing how many clients leave it until the last minute!

For the first time a total of 11.1m taxpayers filed by the 31 January deadline, including around 700,000 who filed on paper by the earlier October 2019 deadline.  HMRC figures show that 958,296 taxpayers missed the deadline (8.18%), up on last year’s 700,000 late returns. As usual, there was a surge of last-minute submissions, as thousands of taxpayers filed their tax returns in the last hour, with 26,562 completing their returns from 11pm to 11:59pm on 31 January.  Throughout the day over 702,000 (7%) taxpayers submitted their returns with the peak hour for filing between 4pm to 4:59pm when 56,969 filed (a couple of these were our clients!)

For those who missed the filing deadline and/or have not made payment, penalties and late payment interest are now being charged, which will increase at the end of February.  It is very difficult to appeal against a late filing penalty, with HMRC releasing the top 10 most bizarre excuses and questionable expenses claims for items they have seen in 2019.

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