Budget For Your Tax Bill

Newsletter issue - August 09.

If you are self-employed it can be a struggle to save up enough money to pay the two instalments of your tax liability for the year due on 31 July and 31 January. HMRC has realised these two large six-monthly bills can be difficult to manage, so they have set up a budget payment plan to help individuals pay their tax bill in smaller chunks.

It works like this:

  • You register on the HMRC website to use the HMRC online service for self-assessment. You don't have to use this service to send in your tax returns, we can still do this for you, but you can review your tax statements online, which is useful.
  • Next, set up a direct debit online to pay your self-assessed tax to HMRC. You choose exactly what to pay and whether to pay weekly or monthly.
  • About 5 days later the direct debit will be 'live' and it will start to take the amount you have authorised from your bank account at the intervals you specified. These amounts will be set against your next tax bill. You can change the amounts or the intervals at any time, and even cancel the payment plan if you wish.
  • Your bank statements will show the payments to HMRC as: 'HMRC NDDS'.

There are some disadvantages to using this budget payment plan:

  • HMRC will not pay you any interest on the amounts you have paid in advance towards your tax bill. A deposit account with a bank would pay a very small amount of interest.
  • You can only make payments under the budget payment plan by direct debit.
  • You cannot get the money back from HMRC to use for another purpose, unless you are due a tax repayment.
  • You must be up to date with your self-assessment tax payments before you can join the budget payment plan.

Currently this budget payment plan can only be used by individuals. There is no similar payment plan in place for companies.

What our clients say about us...

  • "Paul has provided accountancy services to my company for 2 years now. I can recommend Paul very highly; his skills as an accountant are highly detailed and professional and he is always available to provide advice. One aspect of the way Paul works that I greatly appreciate is a preference to meet face to face when there is a detailed conversation to be had. I personally find this more productive and is a benefit of working with a small accountancy firm that you wouldn't get with the large faceless providers."

    ALISTAIR FAIRWEATHER - PROGRAMME & PROJECT MANAGER, DELIVERING/RESCUING I.T. 7 BUSINESS CHANGE WITH BUDGETS UPTO £50M INC SUPPIER MANAGEMENT

  • "I couldn't ask for more from Paul as an Accountant. Paul has been accountant to Work Relief Charity Recruitment for just over a year now and is proving an invaluable asset. Accurate, knowledgeable, flexible with an emphasis on service delivery, I would recommend Paul's services to any organisation looking for an accounts professional."

    Neil Price - Managing Director at Work Relief Charity Recruitment

  • "Paul was a referral from a family member when I started my business 2 years ago. As this was the first time I had ever run my own company I was totally clueless over the financial side of matters and was worried that I may have made mistakes in any of my accounting. I needn't have worried as after enaging Paul for a set monthly fee he was always there on the end of the phone for all sorts of questions I had and no matter how trivial they were Paul gave me all the information I required and more and did an excellent and painless job at the end of my first year! Couldn't ask for any better to be honest. Just two words - hire him!!!"

    Lee Westrap MBCS - Director - Bulldog IT Services

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Booth & Co  |   The Hermitage  |   15a Shenfield Road  |   Brentwood  |   Essex  |   CM15 8AG        Telephone: 01277 224666    |   Email: info@boothandco.co.uk