How to pay your personal tax bill

Anderson AccountsAccountancy Blog1 Comment

The end of January marks both the deadline for filing your personal tax return as well as the expected payment date.

We are often asked how to pay the tax bill. Previously it used to be quite complicated, however HMRC improvements have made it much easier to follow online, as well as offering many more payment methods.

If you go to the website https://www.gov.uk/pay-self-assessment-tax-bill you will be able to log in to your Government Gateway account to make the payment. Even if you can’t login for whatever reason, you should be able to find an alternative way to pay. You can pay with a debit card online, make a bank transfer, pay online through your bank account (this is a recent development which seems quite a slick process) or pay in person at your bank or by sending a cheque.

If you are ever asked for a payment reference, this is normally your Unique Taxpayer Reference (UTR) followed by the letter ‘K’.

If you had been able to submit your tax return before the end of October and are currently employed, then you would have been able request a change in your tax code so that the tax is deducted through PAYE.

Obviously you might not have all of the funds available to pay your tax bill in one payment. HMRC recognise this and have introduced a Time To Pay system which allows you to spread your payments as long as you meet certain criteria such as owing less than £30,000, able to pay the bill within the next 12 months and are within 60 days of the payment deadline. To look at setting this up, you need to have to filed your tax return (and then wait a couple of days for the system to process it). Assuming that is the case, you can go here https://www.gov.uk/difficulties-paying-hmrc/pay-in-instalments to set it up online.

One thing to remember is that if you are required to make payments on account, that the second payment will be due by the end of July.

If you have any further questions, please don’t hesitate to get in touch, although this is one area where HMRC seem to have made significant improvements in recent years.

One Comment on “How to pay your personal tax bill”

  1. Pingback: What to do when you become self-employed | Anderson Accounts

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *