Now you can prepare your Tax return 09/10

Dear Client,

Finally, now it is the beginning of the new financial year 2010/2011 and it is time to prepare your tax return 2009/2010. Please, call us at: 020 7624 16 16 in order to prepare your tax return09/10.

Are you having problems to pay your tax bill? Vertice Services can help you. New Business Payment Support Service.

From 24 November 2008, HMRC has introduced a new, dedicated Business Support Service designed to meet the needs of businesses affected by the current economic conditions.

If you're worried about being able to meet tax, National Insurance, VAT or other payments owed to HM Revenue & Customs (HMRC), or you anticipate that payments coming due will cause you problems, you can contact Vertice Services and we will call the Business Payment Support Line on your behalf.

HMRC’s staff will review your circumstances and discuss temporary options tailored to your business needs, such as arranging for you to make payments over a longer period. They will not charge additional late payment surcharges on payments included in the arrangement, although interest will continue to be payable on those taxes where it applies.

Please note: The Business Payment Support Line is for new enquiries only. If HMRC has already contacted you about an overdue payment, or if you already have a payment arrangement with them, please let us know.

VAT on line

You may have recently received a letter from the VATman that officially notifies your company or business to file its VAT return online, or face penalties. If your business had a turnover of £100,000 or more in the year ending 31 December 2009 you are legally required to file your VAT returns online, rather than as a paper form, for all periods beginning on or after 1 April 2010. So you can file your VAT return for the quarter to 31 March 2010 on paper, but VAT returns for later periods must be submitted online.

If you don't agree that your turnover was £100,000 or more in the year to 31 December 2009, you need appeal against the VATman's decision within 30 days of the date of his letter. The VATman has not sent a copy of his letter to us, so please forward it on if you have concerns about this turnover threshold. If you want us to submit your VAT returns online on your behalf we will need that letter as it contains some key details for the registration process.

Even if you have already filed several of your VAT returns online, and your turnover is over £100,000, you will still receive the notification letter from the VATman, including the expensive glossy brochure. If your turnover is currently less than £100,000 per year, you will not have to file your VAT returns online until 2011. The Government has announced that all VAT registered businesses will be required to file their VAT returns online from April 2011, but that requirement is not law yet.

If your business first registers for VAT on or after 1 April 2010 you will be required to file all your VAT returns online from your first VAT return, even if your turnover is way below the £100,000 threshold.

We can assist with online filing of VAT returns. From simply submitting the return to a full outsourced bookkeeping function. Please contact us for more details PAYE late we should discuss how to improve your systems before the new penalties start.

Beware Tax Email Scams

Many people are currently waiting for a tax rebate from the Tax Office, as they have claimed for losses to be set against an earlier year's income. If you are expecting such a tax refund, or even if you are not, take care not to be drawn in by emails that claim to have a tax rebate ready for you. These emails tend to ask for details of your bank account to pay the refund into, but they are scams.

The UK tax office HMRC does not send emails to taxpayers informing them of tax rebates. All such emails are fraudulent, and potentially very dangerous. You should not respond to the email. Do not click on any link embedded in the email as this may allow the scammers to get to your computer through a virus included in the link.

Fraudulent emails normally stand out as they are not correctly addressed to you personally. The email may have missing address details or say 'Dear Subscriber' or 'Dear Taxpayer'. Some scam emails include what looks like a tax refund form including a fax back number. You should never complete such a form sent to you by email supposedly from HMRC. To complete genuine HMRC forms yourself you need to log into the HMRC secure website using the login details which will have been sent to you in the post.

Time for tax claims

For as many years as we can remember individuals have had six years from the end of the tax year to claim most allowances and tax reliefs in respect of that tax year, (some tax claims have to be made within two years). That long claims period was shortened to five years from 31 January following the end of the tax year when self-assessment was introduced in 1996/97, but that change meant the loss of just two months. Now the long claims period is changing to four years from the end of the tax year with effect for claims submitted from 1 April 2010.

Thus claims and elections for the tax years 2004/05 and 2005/06 need to be made by 31 March 2010 and 5 April 2010 respectively. Such claims could include an error or mistake claim where tax has been overpaid, claims for personal allowances for marriage, age or blindness, and a number of capital gains tax reliefs.

Confusingly these new claims periods do not apply to everyone from the same date. If you have only recently come within the self assessment system, but you want to make a claim for an earlier year when you were taxed only under PAYE, you will have a further two years to make the claim. For example, claims from PAYE taxpayers for the tax year 2004/05 run out of time on 31 January 2011.

The long claims period for limited companies is also changing from six years from the end of the accounting period, to four years from the end of the accounting period, for claims submitted on and after 1 April 2010. Thus claims for accounting periods that end between 31 March 2004 and 31 March 2006 all need reach the Tax Office by 31 March 2010.

The period during which the Taxman can normally raise a tax bill for a particular tax year has also been cut back to four years from the end of that year. However, where the extra tax is due because the taxpayer has made a careless or deliberate error, the Taxman has six years, extending to 20 years for deliberate errors, to raise the tax bill.