December 19th, 2014  

Completing your Self-Assessment Tax Return online requires the same information and financial information as if you were submitting via paper.

The key advantages to submitting on-line (as opposed to via paper) is that you have an additional 3 months to make the submission (31st January as opposed to 31st October), you only need to complete the sections that are relevant for you and submitting online means that the calculations are done for you, automatically.

The online submission will lead you through the process beginning with a welcome which gives a helpful reminder of the paperwork that you may need before your start. You then complete a section about you (name, address, Ni number etc) followed by a section called “Tailor your return” which is a simple series of questions with a yes or no answer which will ensure that you then only complete the sections of the full tax return which are relevant to you.

Once you’ve completed all the relevant sections, you’ll then check and confirm the information you’ve completed and then your tax calculation is produced. You can go back and amend the information entered at any stage and the tax return submission is saved each time your complete a page and move onto the next.

There are a couple of forms that will need to be submitted using commercial software (generally this will be via professional bookkeepers and accountants) which are:

• Partnership Return
• Trust and Estate Tax Return
• Some pages that support the main tax return, for example, those for Lloyd’s members and ministers of religion

There are also a few forms that can only be submitted via paper (so cannot be submitted online):

◾SA700 – Non-resident Company Tax Return

◾SA970 – Trustees of Registered Pension Schemes

It’s worth noting that the deadline for filing these two paper returns is 31st January, unless you want HMRC to do the calculation, in which the filing deadline is 31st October.

If you find yourself struggling to complete your tax return for any reason, get in touch and I’ll do whatever I can to help.