Self assessment - no letter received asking for tax return

[Nic jones]

My gf registered as self employed atthe beginning of October and hasn't received a letter asking her to do a tax return yet.

According to the website if you haven't received your letter by the 30th of October you don't have a deadline of jan 31st and therefore get 3 months from the date you do receive the letter.

Would she therefore be safe to asse that she doesn't need to fill in a tax return yet? Cheers

[V8mate]

She could alwasy call her local Tax Office and ask?

Might be quicker than waiting for internet randoms to give you their opinion rather than the actual answer.

[Steve_T]

Did she register in October 2009? Don't forget the return at the end of this month is for Apr 08-Apr 09 - does she need to fill one in at all?

[Eric Mc]

She needs to phone HMRC as quickly as possible to see if she has been allocated a UTR (Unique Tax Reference). She cannot submit a tax return without this UTR. At the same time she needs to check if they have sent out to her the notification to complete a return. They do not issue blank returns - only this notice. Many people receive these notices and do not realise that they are the legal equivalent of getting the blank return for completion.

If she has been issued with the notice, then she will need to submit a return, whether she RECEIVED the notice or not (it could have been sent to a wrong address).

At this moment in time, it is now past the date where she could submit a paper 2008/09 tax return. She will have to submit it online.

In order to submit it online, she needs an Authentification Code from HMRC (this is different to the UTR) and a PIN. HMRC only send these out by normal post - so, even if she asks for one now, it may be tooo close to 31 January for her to get these codes in time to allow the online submission to be made.

As a Self Employed individual, she should also have been paying her Class 2 National Insurance contributions from when she started. It sounds to me like that hasn't been sorted either.

[Nic jones]

Thanks all, we've got somewhere now, she registered in October 09, and was PAYE for the last tax year. Thus as rightly stated above she doesn't have to do one until the end of this tax year.

Me being a lowly tax dodging student had no idea whether she had to or not and she wasn't sure either as she's still new to this working for yourself malarky.

Eric, she has had a letter regarding NI so that is taken care of I believe.

Thanks all

[Eric Mc]

She will be issued with a formal Notice to Complete a 2009/10 Self Assessment Tax Return" sometime after 6 April 2010.

She has until 31 October 2010 to submit this if she is filing a paper return.

If she opts for Internet filing, she has until 31 January 2011 to submit it.