Small business and tax blog

This month sees self assessment tax returns arriving through letterboxes across the UK, and this year there are some changes to the return. Here are the main issues to watch out for.

The main tax return is now shorter, at 6 pages rather than 10. The pages have been re-organised and the whole return is in a machine-readable format, so it looks very different to previous years.

The tax office is becoming keener than ever that you file the tax return over the internet. In previous years, the filing deadline for all tax returns was 31 January. This year, tax returns sent in on paper should be submitted by 31 October, or there may be a fine. For tax returns submitted online, the deadline remains 31 January. The dates for paying the tax are unchanged.

In many areas the information being asked for is simpler. For example, with bank interest received, only the net interest figure is required. Previously, the net, tax and gross were needed. This provided a useful check that the correct figures were being used, so extra care should be taken this year to distinguish between the gross and net.

Some forms of tax relief, such as subscriptions for Venture Capital Trust shares, maintenance payments and age-related Married Couples Allowance are now claimed on a separate form instead of being part of the main tax return form. If you benefit from any of these, it is important not to overlook filling in the separate pages.

There are now 2 sets of supplementary pages for self-employed income. In more complicated situations (the main one being, if annual business turnover was over £64,000), the full 6-page supplement needs to be completed. In more straightforward cases, the 2-page supplement may be used instead.

The capital gains tax pages now require you to send in your own computation of any capital gain. This is likely to cause difficulties for taxpayers who have no experience in preparing a tax computation. As capital gains tax is such a complicated tax, and the amounts of tax at stake are usually relatively high, this is an area in which you should consult a tax advisor.

There is a controversial new question on the form, which asks whether any income is being received for services performed through a service company. This is an attempt by HMRC to fish for information on whether any dividend income that you have received should instead be taxed at a higher rate as employment income. If you think you may be affected by this, you should consult a tax advisor.

For professional help with your tax return, please see our tax returns page.