Today I received a nice letter from HRM Revenue & Customs (yet another site that doesn’t work without being prefixed with “www”). It states:

Notice of determination of penalty for a late Tax Return for the tax year ended 5 April 2007. I did not receive your Tax Return by the due date so you are liable to a penalty.

Oh how nice! Upon reading further I found out the following information:

As a result the penalty imposed on you under Secxtion 93(2) of the Taxes Management Act 1970 is £100.00

This “fine” comes to around $217 Australian. Happy Easter eh!?

But wait, there’s more!

If you want to appeal you must do so:

• in writing, and
• within 30 days of the date of this Notice

See if you can guess what the “date of notice” is? Wait for it…. Date 19 FEBRUARY 2008

Awesome! So I’ve already missed the deadline to whinge about it, purely because I’m on the other side of the planet. I wonder what it means for me now that I have missed the deadline…

Penalites for late Tax Returns

• A penalty of £100 is imposed automatically if the Tax Return has not been received by the due date.
• A further £100 penalty is imposed automatically if the Tax Return has still not been received 6 months later.
• Further penalties up to a maximum of £60 a day can also be imposed.
• If the Tax Return is more than 12 months late there can be a penalty up to the amount of tax payable for the year.

So I could be up for some serious fines then! Awesome, just what I wanted to hear.

By now you’re probably wondering why I’m blogging about this. Well the answer is simple. Before you read on you need to bear in mind the following:

1. The U.K. Tax Year goes from the beginning of April, through to the end of March the following year.
2. This notice is stating that I’m being fined for not submitting a Tax Return for the tax year that ended April 2007 - which means it’s for the tax year of 5th April 2006, to the 4th April 2007

Amy and I flew back to Australia on March 24th 2006. I stopped work in the U.K. on the 3rd March 2006. I had a Tax Return done for the last year I was there while I was at home. How the f*** can I possibly be in need to submit a Tax Return for a tax year that I had absolutely nothing to do with!??! I wasn’t even in the country! Now I have the fun job of chasing it up from the other side of the planet, which will no doubt take ages due to the “efficiency” of the U.K. Government workers. What a joke.