How to pay your tax bill

If your tax return was submitted some months ago you would expect to have received a statement of account by now, which should include a payslip for the amount of tax payable on 31 January 2008. However this year HMRC say there has been a delay in sending out some of the Statements of Account. Other clients may have received an acknowledgment of their submitted return along with a blank payslip.

You can pay your tax bill by any of these methods:
· Send a cheque through the post to the HMRC accounts office;
· At a bank counter using bank giro;
· At a post office counter;
· Using a debit card over the internet; or
· A BACS payment through their own bank using telephone or internet banking

HMRC prefer taxpayers to use electronic methods of payment such as by debit card, or BACS as then they receive the money quicker. These methods also do not need a payslip, only the unique taxpayer reference number (UTR), and the bank account details of the relevant accounts office. These are available on the internet banking page of the HMRC website, see below.

If you are not happy with using an electronic payment method you will normally need to use a payslip. You can use any payslip HMRC have sent to you within the last 12 months, as long as it refers to your own personal tax affairs and not for any company or business you are involved in.

If you are new to the UK tax system ou ymay not have a payslip, in this case you need to send a cheque to the HMRC accounts office with a covering letter giving the following details:

name
address
telephone number
tax reference
type of tax paid eg. income tax
period or year it refers to eg. 2006/07
amount paid

Information on paying using telephone/internet banking
http://www.hmrc.gov.uk/howtopay/int_tel_bank_sa.htm

Paying tax due by debit card over the internet:
http://www.hmrc.gov.uk/howtopay/debitcard_int.htm

They can't come knocking any more!

Here's Johnny!

In one small piece of good news for the hapless taxpayer, it has been announced that HMRC has backed down on plans to make unannounced visits to private residences.

HMRC had wanted to update its powers, and be able to enter private homes without a search warrant.

This of course is contrary to the principles of English law laid down over the centuries.However, the resulting furore that these plans had unleashed has caused HMRC to back down.

In its latest consultation papers it states that visits would only be by agreement, or with a warrant.HMRC is getting above itself, the state most assuredly should not have unrestricted access to people's homes.

http://hmrcisshite.blogspot.com/www.hmrcisshite.com is brought to you by http://www.kenfrost.com/ "The Living Brand"

A message from under the tax returns!

Well here I am up to my neck in last minute tax returns again!
Every year I say "never again" and every year the same thing happens.

Why o why don't my late January clients understand that they can submit their tax returns before 31 January? I will have to study the master of influence - Dale Carnegie and try his methods. He said : -


"There is only one way to get anybody to do anything. And that is by making the other person want to do it." -- Dale Carnegie

Wise words! I shall have to try and make them work for me;)

Tax avoidance is sensible AND legal!

A quote about tax avoidance from the famous American judge Learned Hand

Tax avoidance and tax evasion are not the same. Evasion is morally wrong and illegal and those that do it should be punished.

Avoidance is sensible and legal, you have a duty to your company to maximise your profit within the boundaries of the law which includes minimising the tax liability.

"Anyone may arrange his affairs so that his taxes shall be as low as possible; he is not bound to choose that pattern which best pays the treasury. There is not even a patriotic duty to increase one's taxes.Over and over again the Courts have said that there is nothing sinister in so arranging affairs as to keep taxes as low as possible. Everyone does it, rich and poor alike and all do right, for nobody owes any public duty to pay more than the law demands."

Judge Billings Learned Hand.

Some thoughts before the end of the year

Here's a question that you should clip out and tape to your bathroom mirror. It might save you some angst 15 years from now.

The question is, What did you do back when interest rates were at their lowest in 50 years, crime was close to zero, great employees were looking for good jobs, computers made product development and marketing easier than ever, and there was almost no competition for good news about great ideas?

Many people will have to answer that question by saying, "I spent my time waiting, whining, worrying, and wishing." Because that's what seems to be going around these days. Fortunately, though, not everyone will have to confess to having made such a bad choice.

While your company has been waiting for the economy to rebound, Reebok has launched Travel Trainers, a very cool-looking lightweight trainer for travelers. They are selling out in Japan -- from vending machines in airports!

While Detroit's car companies have been whining about gas prices and bad publicity for SUVs (SUVs are among their most profitable products), Honda has been busy building cars that look like SUVs but get twice the gas mileage. The Honda Pilot was so popular, it had a waiting list.
While Africa's economic plight gets a fair amount of worry, a little startup called Kickstart is actually doing something about it. The new income that its products generate accounts for 0.5% of the entire GDP of Kenya. How? It manufactures a $75 device that looks a lot like a StairMaster. But it's not for exercise. Instead, Kickstart sells the machine to subsistence farmers, who use its stair-stepping feature to irrigate their land. People who buy it can move from subsistence farming to selling the additional produce that their land yields -- and triple their annual income in the first year of using the product.

While you've been wishing for the inspiration to start something great, thousands of entrepreneurs have used the prevailing sense of uncertainty to start truly remarkable companies. Lucrative Web businesses, successful tool catalogues, fast-growing PR firms -- all have started on a shoestring, and all have been profitable ahead of schedule.

The Web is dead, right? Well, try telling that to Meetup.com, a new Web site that helps organize meetings anywhere and on any topic. It has 200,000 registered users -- and counting.

Maybe you already have a clipping on your mirror that asks you what you did during the 1990s. What's your biggest regret about that decade? Do you wish that you had started, joined, invested in, or built something? Are you left wishing that you'd at least had the courage to try? In hindsight, the 1990s were the good old days. Yet so many people missed out. Why? Because it's always possible to find a reason to stay put, to skip an opportunity, or to decline an offer. And yet, in retrospect, it's hard to remember why we said no and easy to wish that we had said yes.

The thing is, we still live in a world that's filled with opportunity. In fact, we have more than an opportunity -- we have an obligation. An obligation to spend our time doing great things. To find ideas that matter and to share them. To push ourselves and the people around us to demonstrate gratitude, insight, and inspiration. To take risks and to make the world better by being amazing.

Are these crazy times? You bet they are. But so were the days when we were doing duck-and-cover air-raid drills in school, or going through the scares of Three Mile Island and Love Canal.

There will always be crazy times.

So stop thinking about how crazy the times are, and start thinking about what the crazy times demand. There has never been a worse time for business as usual. Business as usual is sure to fail, sure to disappoint, sure to numb our dreams. That's why there has never been a better time for the new. Your competitors are too afraid to spend money on new productivity tools. Your bankers have no idea where they can safely invest. Your potential employees are desperately looking for something exciting, something they feel passionate about, something they can genuinely engage in and engage with.

You get to make a choice. You can remake that choice every day, in fact. It's never too late to choose optimism, to choose action, to choose excellence. The best thing is that it only takes a moment -- just one second -- to decide.

Before you finish this paragraph, you have the power to change everything that's to come. And you can do that by asking yourself (and your colleagues) the one question that every organisation and every individual needs to ask today: Why not be great?

courtesy of Seth Godin http://www.sethgodin.com/