Welcome to the first of our series of guest blogs from selected CircleLoop partners, designed to help and educate on some of the common challenges and potential solutions experienced by modern businesses.

The self assessment deadline is right around the corner, and every year many individuals don’t submit their return on time, or there is carelessness in its completion, risking HMRC fines or worse.

In our latest blog, Oldham-based GoSimpleTax explain the importance of filing your tax return before the deadline and how their SaaS product can assist.

The Situation

Inaccurate numbers are a common tax return mistake and HMRC have fined plenty of taxpayers due to this error.

It doesn’t matter the complexity of the calculations you need to make, you will be issued a penalty regardless if HRMC believe you have been careless. This fine is a minimum of 15% of the additional tax owed, and can be up to a maximum of 30%.

Avoid a Penalty

The main way of escaping any sort of fine is by submitting the tax return on time, you should set aside a specific time slot to get your tax affairs done and dusted.

Help yourself by collating all the information required in one place throughout the year. This could be in a physical space or one that’s virtual, always ensure there’s no chance of anything getting lost – doing this will prove useful in guaranteeing the figures are accurate.

Knowing the potential penalties will also keep you motivated to file the Self Assessment on time.

Penalties

Here’s what the current penalties are:

• 1 day late – you would receive £100 penalty
• Anything up to 3 months late - £100 plus £10 for each day afterwards for up to 90 days
• Anything up to 6 months late – the above penalties plus either £300 or 5% of the total tax due – whichever is higher
• Anything up to 12 months late – the above penalties with extra £300 fine or 5% of the tax owed

Although it may seem like it’s not much money you have to pay extra, you’ll still have to submit your return at some point and submitting later will always mean you pay more.

Ensuring accurate figures

You can miss any penalties by assuring that all the figures are correct. You can use GoSimpleTax as your own personal guide. It provides all the advice you’ll need, this means the information will be completely accurate and you can reduce the tax owed too.

Using GoSimpleTax you can simply input your data and it will automatically do the calculations for you. This is done in real time, so you can get a clear picture of your finance.

To ensure you get your tax return in on time without risking a penalty, you can try most of our features in the GoSimpleTax 14-day free trial.

About GoSimpleTax

GoSimpleTax was established in 2013 with the mission of providing a Self Assessment solution for individuals to submit their tax return to HMRC without the need for an accountant.

About CircleLoop

Since 2016 we’ve been building the world’s most powerful and flexible business phone system. CircleLoop runs in simple cloud-based apps rather than being reliant on cables, clunky hardware and complicated connections. It works with the tools you already use (including HubSpot, Zoho and Slack) and it's completely self-service with set up taking just a few minutes.