I Like Self Assessment (But They Won't Let Me Do It)

I phoned the Inland Revenue this evening. Sorry, HM Customs & Revenue as they are now called. Having just got back from a five mile run (it felt good) I wasn't in the best state for talking to a tax officer on the phone but the office was going to close in 15 minutes so I didn't have much choice if I wanted to get my task done this evening.

Essentially (and to cut a long and dull tax story short) I used to do self-assessment (which I liked doing!) but then as part of some kind of scheme to make things easier for people they moved me to the "short-form". It's like a tax return with only four boxes. And then they stopped sending me even that - they just changed my tax code and left me alone.

Now PAYE tax codes are a bit mysterious but broadly they are actually quite simple. The number is equal to your tax-free allowance divided by 10. And that's it. If you have some regular tax deductible expenses (eg my Institute of Actuaries fees), they can be used to increase your allowance. And if you have regular untaxed taxable income (interest, dividends, earnings on the side etc) it decreases your allowance. This should all mean that everything ends up with you paying about the right amount of tax, regularly, through your payroll.

This would be fine if you never changed your circumstances.

I used to get some money from marking exam scripts which I no longer get since I stopped marking. I wouldn't have complained too much if they wanted to continue to pay me for not marking, but they didn't. Hence my tax code gives me an allowance which is significantly too low.

Which is where we get round go me phoning up the Revenue.

I wanted them to just send me a full tax return self assessment form like I used to get. I liked them, they were fun (and you could do them online in about ten minutes). But it seems quite hard to persuade them to do this. I'm guessing there's some significant manual work they have to do even for the online submissions. But even a short-form would have been ok.

Instead she made me look up all the numbers there and then on the phone - ie last year's dividends, my interest, current Institute rates etc. All in a friendly way, mind, but given I was a bit hot and sweaty it wasn't really what I wanted to be doing. And the dividends turned out to be hard to find even in my "sophisticated filing system". But I did find everything and I'm hoping it should result in a nice increase in my tax code and maybe even a rebate if I'm really lucky.

I bet if I said I'd earned a million pounds of untaxed income last year they'd send me a form like a shot.