HMRC posted a news story on their website a few days ago. Under the intriguing bye line “Don’t let your tax return peck away at you” HMRC confirmed that there were just 100 days left to file a 2017-18 self-assessment tax return.
They added:
Last year, more than 11 million customers completed a 2016-17 Self-Assessment tax return, with 10.7 million completing on time. There were 4,852,744 customers who filed in January 2018 (44.8% of the total), and 758,707 on 31 January, the deadline day.
These statistics are not particularly good news for practitioners as this points to a bottleneck in return processing for January. Of course, the position may be skewed in accountants’ favour as hopefully professionals will have more than 55% of their clients’ returns completed before the end of December?
The 100 days to go headline in this post does focus one’s mind on the ticking clock. For example, as at the day we wrote this blog post (25 October 2018) there are:
- 68 days until companies with a 31 March 2018 year end need to pay their corporation tax.
- 98 days until the balancing payment for 2017-18 tax and first payment on account for 2018-19 are due.
- 155 days until we exit the EU.
- 163 days until VAT traders (turnover in excess of £85,000) have to be MTD compatible.
- 529 days – the earliest date that MTD quarterly accounts data summaries may have to be uploaded to HMRC.
And on a brighter note:
- 61 days until Christmas Day, and
- 68 days until New Year’s Day 2019
None of which should distract us from actually getting on with things, as we all know from experience, watching the clock doesn’t get the work done.
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