Self-Assessment Tax Advisers

You may be able to claim tax relief or allowances on your self-assessment. We will always look to claim the maximum amount of relief and allowances based on your circumstances. These include, pension, charity donations, transferring marriage allowance, buy-to-let and mortgage interest.

Late submission and inaccuracies of your self-assessment will incur different fines. If you submit your tax return past the deadline you will receive an automatic HMRC fine of £100 – this can quickly increase as after three months you will then incur daily fines of £10 per day.

If there are inaccuracies in your tax return, it is important to disclose your mistake to HMRC before they check your return. To avoid any mistakes, we can guide you through the self-assessment process and ensure you submit your information on time and accurately. We can also liaise with HMRC on your behalf if you are contacted about your self-assessment and help to amend any inaccuracies.

You have the option to complete and submit the self-assessment by yourself, as long as you follow the correct procedure provided by HMRC, and have provided all relevant information. Alternatively, you can seek help by appointing others to deal with HMRC on your behalf, such as an accountant. However, you are still fully responsible for your own tax return. So, in summary, your options are:

• Complete self-assessment on your own: If you find yourself in a situation where you are required to submit a Self-Assessment, but the affairs are simple and straightforward, you can choose to prepare your tax return on your own. This is usually the case where a taxpayer has straightforward income sources such as employment/interest income and is a UK tax resident.
• Complete self-assessment by appointing someone: Whilst you may be more than capable of doing your own Self-Assessment tax return, you may prefer the reassurance of having an experienced advisor to assist you. This is especially important when situations arise and your tax affairs may be more complicated to deal with. For example, a sole trader who has income and expenses from a large or small business to report, a taxpayer with rental income, a taxpayer who receives substantial foreign income, or even all of the above combined. This is usually where taxpayers will want to appoint an accountant to help with their returns.

You can authorise someone else, an “agent”, to deal with HMRC for you – for example, an accountant, friend, or relative. If you have to fill in a self-assessment tax return, HMRC will send all correspondence to the person you’ve authorised – except tax bills or refunds. Otherwise, HMRC will continue to write to you.

An agent can be:

• A professional accountant or tax adviser
• A friend or relative
• Someone from a voluntary organisation
• They must meet HMRC’s standards for agents.

To appoint an agent to deal with your tax, you must ask them to use HMRC’s online authorisation service or complete form 64-8 and send it to HMRC. This is something we do as part of our initial sign-up process.

With the help of an experienced accountant, you will have peace of mind that your tax affairs are in good hands. An accountant can also offer advice on financial challenges you may be facing, with the confidence that you are doing things correctly.

For example, at Gerald Edelman, we go through everything you have provided and present a coherent solution based on our expertise and knowledge. We will check your bookkeeping to ensure that all sales and expenditures have been identified correctly, and remind you of all correspondence, meeting any deadlines to avoid a penalty incurring.

Finally, sometimes HMRC will raise questions about your tax return. This does not mean anything is wrong but it can cause you considerable stress and anxiety. We offer our clients the opportunity to subscribe to tax insurance which would cover our costs in the event of an enquiry being raised. This is only available on the basis we are involved in the completion of your tax return.