The government coffers are due to swell to the tune of £85m in £100 fines from the 850,000 people who failed to complete their tax return by January 31st this year.
According to Sky, HMRC will complete mailing fines to those who should have submitted a tax return by Wednesday this week. If that’s you then the best advice is to get your tax return completed and returned as quickly as possible, not only can HMRC levy further fines, but you’ll still have to pay the tax anyway.
If you believe that you shouldn’t have to complete a tax return, but receive a penalty notice then you should contact HMRC without delay. If for example you used to sell on eBay in a self employed status, but have now returned to full time salaried employment and have no other income which would require completing a tax return, then HMRC do have the ability to remove you from self assessment requirements and could rescind your £100 fine.
7 Responses
Do the rest of us that got it in on time get a tax break next year then? Or is that 85m for their Christmas party? 🙂
Simple solution. If you do not complete your tax return ebay suspend you.
ebay can set up a system to allow sellers to enter their HMRC ref number and tick a box to say the return has been sent. This info is then passed on to HMRC. If after 14 days HMRC claim they have not received the return ebay suspend the account.
Both private sellers and business sellers will be required to do this. A private seller can tick a seperate box indicating that they are not required to send in a return. If after investigation HMRC believe that they are then the account is suspended until a return is sent in.
A law can be made enforcing all marketplace providers to implement this arrangement.
How do we deal with an eBay that files its tax return in Luxembourg?
I hope you are not suggesting a VAT based system. VAT is a European Tax and as such I seem to remember that the EU gets a substantial proportion of the tax raised as well as having the ultimate control over such as Rates and whether or not the UK Government would be allowed to reduce it at some time in the future.
Also in the EU there is supposed to be a “Level Playing Field”. However if each Country has substantially differing Taxation systems then how is anything “Level”.
However if you are talking about an alternative to the VAT system then almost certainly the only way that it would be allowed to even exist would be if we were outside the EU.
Lets just take an example. If the UK did collect the majority of its taxation through a “Sales Transaction & activity based tax system” rather than an Income Tax based system then the VAT Rate would be enormous, possibly 50%. So why would anybody buy anything in the UK? Online everybody in the UK would be buying in which ever of the EU Countries had the lowest rate of VAT and shipping it back to the UK.
Remember those of us(not me Books are so far Zero Rated)who sell anything online in the UK that is Vatable would be wiped out in a blink of the eye. Or would have to move to such as Holland or Belgium(or even Luxembourg)
I hope that you will re-consider your suggestion as it would be a disaster.