Ways to get Your Accountancy Fee’s Down

Why Should I Get My Tax Return Prepared Early

One of the questions that I often get asked is why I should get my tax return done early I will get it done in December or January and make them wait.

HM Revenue & Customs issues a notice to complete a tax return for individuals like you and me on 06 April every year and the deadline for the tax return to be submitted is 31 January the following year. So a notice sent out 06 April 2014 and the tax return is due on 31 January 2015 if submitting this online or 31 October 2014 if sending this in by paper format.

Finalising Your Tax Affairs

If you get your tax return done early and you have what you may consider a large liability it will give you time to organise your funds and then make payment before the 31 January meaning you have no interest charges added to your tax liability and also save on the 5% surcharge that is sent out on any unpaid tax in late February.

Rebate

Preparing your tax return early and you may be due a rebate and you do not have to wait until January to submit this you can submit this any time after 06 April and your rebate will be repaid to you. The later you leave your tax return when you are due a rebate the longer you may have to wait, I submitted my return recently and my rebate came back in under two weeks.

Payments On Account

If you are self-employedand you have to makepayments on account towards the next year and your profits have gone down then the payment on account in July may not be due. By getting your tax return done early (before July) this will be highlighted and by submitting the tax return it may cancel the payment on account.

Compare this to paying the payment on account in July and getting your tax return done in December and submitted in January at the peak time you will have to wait even longer to get your rebate.

HM Revenue & Customs

January is the busiest time  to file your tax return either by logging onto the HM Revenue & Customs website and completing this on their or using an accountant who would use the government gateway to submit this on your behalf normally using external software.

In the past their website has been known to crash especially on the last day of submissions and if this is unavailable when you need to submit your tax return then it can only be submitted once this is up and running again.

If you cannot submit your tax return due to the website crash then you will incur a £100.00 late filing penalty even if it is only for one day  and now this applies even if you no tax to pay and if you wait even longer to submit the tax return there are further late filing penalties.

Training

If you have the time and it interests you, we run training sessions on bookkeeping training so you can do more of the work and this will reduce the work we have to do so your accountancy fee will drop.

The tasks we see clients not doing in the bank reconciliation and sales ledger reconciliation for any bad debt and this can be a time consuming task particularly if you have a lot od transactions.