When I spoke to the very helpful chap at HMRC c.late Oct, he mentioned that fixed deposits are a challenge for them e.g. a larger lump of interest (assume taxable), which may not repeat, and which they would then base their next year’s NoC on.
Sadly, even though I am now enabled on Self-Assessment (I see as a PAYG process), HMRC still want to effect an aggressive coding-out for tax (24/25) which will, in the final knockings, not be due. They’ve carried forward a legacy tax-due debt (non-repeating) which was settled-out in my TYE’23 SA return.
As you say, I’ve become aware of their methodologies, but some parties may be surprised and concerned by the letters they have/will get, especially now HMRC are getting much-improved data capture (esp. interest) from UK deposit providers. One issue here is that NS&I often pay interest at close of tax-year, so you could be coded-out for interest income you haven’t seen yet.
Of course, several years ago, the Savings Allowances were introduced to avoid HMRC getting bogged down with small sums – but these have been severely reduced. Self-inflicted pain IMV.
Nothing else seems to work in Britain, so HMRC might as well join in. I looked up the detail on this and HMRC say that nearly all the things they deal with on the phone are very simple and can be done online. One thing I wanted to do yesterday was sort out tax relief on gift aid donations, and when I told the adviser I’d tried to do it online but failed, I was told that it needed to be done on the phone or by physically writing in. It’s bizarre, as I could just as easily have entered the figure in a box online. It’s hardly as if I needed to supply any evidence. There must be countless people who would much rather call; so much for customer choice. But then, we’re not really customers, are we?
I have hated the online since they first launched it 20-30 years ago. It might be better now, but I am happy to submit paper returns. With about a week to the 31st January, when payment was due, I rang because they had not sent me their calculations of what I owed. The next day their calculations arrived! The post was taking several week at that time!
I am planning big gift aid to help a D Phil student complete his thesis after his grant runs out at the end of March. It’s only for 5 months, but this tax year I want to avoid paying higher rate so I must do my calculations by the end of the tax year quite carefully. The non pension stuff gets a bit tricky.
I’ve just got home from seeing Pat Metheny in concert. It was just him on stage – with at least 15 guitars and his famous orchestrion. An amazing show, with music from many stages of his long career.
I have been putting together my tasting diary for week #2 of the Bordeaux En Primeur circus in April.
I have someone else do it for me for the ‘Left Bank’, but in St Emilion/Pomerol there is no overall organisation, so we all have to play ‘quel créneau?’.
Car in for it’s service today requiring me to load up my bike in the boot.
Off down the coast and on the way back I made a detour via a piece of land as kids we used to muck about on. It may come as a surprise to some that there was still a lot World War 2 legacy/junk about in the UK in the mid-60’s.
All the land has been built on but one area we used to call ‘The Big Hill’ remains. This provided a great slalom course on a piece of shiny waxed hardboard. 60 odd years later The Big Hill is still there but it’s not big at all just a mound really - I stood there gazing at it for a while - thinking I wonder where all my mates of that time are now and thinking of the Peggy Lee song ‘Is that all it is’.
I had an NSi bond mature in Feb and was allowed to just take the interest out leaving the bulk of it in the account.
The ‘product’ no longer existed and oddly I was given a higher interest rate than the original bond!
