This year has been a very strange one for many businesses and has financially hit a lot of people hard. The government has been giving out loans, grants and tax reliefs to many who have been negatively impacted by the pandemic. Many self employed people, who qualified, were given a number of grants based on their previous earnings to live off. These grants where to top up the wages of those that have been out of work or who have suffered a loss in revenue due to the lockdowns and therefore being unable to work as much as they normally would.
It is important that anyone who is self employed ensures that they keep all of their financial records up to date and holds on to any evidence they may require at a later date. IT may be that HMRC start to carry out audits and spot checks on self employed people to find out if they have claimed what they should of and if they owe any extra in tax. With the country in a bit of a financial crisis, they are likely to want to reap back in as much money as they can.
For those of you that haven’t already submitted your 2019-2020 tax return, you only have a couple of weeks left to do it. The deadline for online submission is the 31st January and those that do not submit their return by this time will incur additional fines. Even if you have not made a profit or have earned below the tax threshold, you still need to submit your return. It may be that you use an accountant or book keeper to help you with your tax return. If this is the case then you need to speak to them ASAP as many are already fully booked and will struggle to get the submissions in on time.
If you do your book keeping yourself, work out all the figures you need to input first. This will allow you to do it in one go without having to keep saving it and going back to it. If it is the first time you have done it you may want to put all your figures in and print it off before you submit it. This will give you the opportunity to read over it and double check that it is all correct before you hit the button to submit it to HMRC.