Around 4.3 million customers (42%) left it until January to file their returns, which HMRC issued in April 2014.
By the end of January, more than a million Self Assessment-only customers (self-employed, with no other source of income, no employees and not VAT-registered) opted to receive electronic messages from HMRC, rather than paper communications. If you are eligible, you can sign up by logging into your Self Assessment online account and following the prompts.
HMRC’s Director General of Personal Tax, Ruth Owen, said:
“This is another record-breaking year for Self Assessment, with 210,000 more people filing their returns on time than last year.
We’re grateful to the overwhelming majority of people who sent their returns on time. If you’re one of the minority who missed the deadline, you still need to get your tax return to us as soon as possible, to avoid further penalties and interest mounting up.” Missing the tax return deadline results in an automatic £100 late-filing penalty. There are further late-filing penalties after 3, 6 and 12 months. People with a genuine reason for not filing should contact HMRC to ensure they do not incur more penalties. For anyone who still hasn’t filed their return, help and advice is available from GOV.UK or the Self Assessment helpline on 0300 200 3310 (open 8am to 8pm, Monday to Friday, and 8am to 4pm on Saturday).
Customers with general tax return queries can tweet the @HMRCcustomers Twitter feed, from 8am to 6pm, Monday to Friday. Tweets should not contain any personal information.
HMRC map pinpoints tax crime
10 February 2015
An online map pinpointing tax cheats around the country together with their crime and sentence has been launched by HMRC.
The map allows people to see the impact of HMRC’s enforcement work.
It shows convictions resulting in jail sentences since April 2013, and the locations of HMRC taskforces since they were introduced in 2011. It will be expanded in the future to include non-custodial sentences since April 2013. The interactive site also features the results of HMRC taskforces targeting specific trades and professions, as well as details of people caught and jailed as a result of investigations by HMRC’s Criminal Investigation teams.
David Gauke, Financial Secretary to the Treasury, said:
“HMRC’s investigators are catching tax cheats in every corner of the country and we want people to be able to see the outcome of this enforcement action.
HMRC’s new online enforcement map shows tax cheats that when they are caught they can face hefty prison sentences.
It is yet another example of how the government is making HMRC’s work more transparent.”
HMRC’s Chief Executive, Lin Homer, said:
CIPP Policy News Journal
08/04/2015, Page 209 of 521
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