Self Assessment
What is the deadline?
The deadline for the submission of your 23/24 self assessment tax return is midnight on 31 January 2025.
HMRC charge penalties for late returns and interest on late payments, so it’s best to get yourself sorted and get it submitted ASAP.
What are payments on account?
If your tax bill is over £1000 and you don’t already pay most of your tax via PAYE (over 80%) then you will find yourself being hit with having to make payments on account.
This means that HMRC will assume that you will have to pay the same tax again for the 24/25 tax year and you will pay 50% of this in January 2025 and 50% in July 2025 – with any adjustments for additional tax being due (or too much having been paid) being made in January 2026 along with the next payment on account. The idea is that it evens out your tax payments (and HMRC don’t have to wait quite so long for their cash!)
As an example: if your tax bill is £1,400 then in Jan 2025 you will pay the £1,400 for the 23/24 tax year plus £700 payment on account for the 24/25 tax year (so £2,100 in total). Then in July 2025 you will pay a second payment on account of £700 for the next year and so on.
Then when you do your 24/25 tax return, if the actual tax was £1,500 you will only need to pay £100 extra in Jan 2026 for 24/25 and your first payment on account will be £750 … and so on.
So once you have got over that initial shock of the first massive payment, it isn’t quite as bas a long as your tax bill stays relatively stable.
How to pay your self assessment bill
About 50% of my emails over January are “how do I pay my self-assessment again?” Obviously Google is your friend or you might have had a letter/statement from HMRC but otherwise:
Sort code – 08 32 10
Account number – 12001039
Account name – HMRC Cumbernauld
And the payment reference is your 10 digit Unique Taxpayer Reference (UTR) with a K at the end.
Help – I can’t afford to pay my tax bill
So you’ve got that number you need to pay to HMRC and you’ve looked at it and thought “oh bother” (or something like that) then the first thing to do is ensure you submit your return as HMRC will issue penalties for the late filing of returns and you don’t want to end up owing more than you need to.
If your tax bill is less than £30k then you can request a payment plan with HMRC online within 60 days of the payment deadline (31 Jan 2025), but you must not owe HMRC any other money.
I would however, strongly recommend that you get a payment plan in place ASAP if you need it rather than leaving it 60 days!
And lastly…
Please don’t leave your self assessment until midnight on deadline day... your wifi will go down, HMRC will crash... it’s all stress that you just don’t need!
And just as a reminder, we’re not taking on any self-assessment work – sorry!
Rachael