An extra £5,000 a year is worth having in anyone’s language.. If you are one of the 9 million people in the UK who has to fill in a self-assessment tax return, then you have one urgent task over the next two weeks. Assuming you haven’t already filled it in, then get cracking and do so!

If you are one of the 9 million people in the UK who has to fill in a self-assessment tax return, then you have one urgent task over the next two weeks. Assuming you haven’t already filled it in, then get cracking and do so!
Why the haste? As you may have already seen on the Inland Revenue’s TV ads featuring Hector the Inspector, 30 September is one of the important deadlines in the self-assessment calendar.

And since this year, the date falls on a Saturday, then Friday 29th is your target.There are a few provisos here. First of all, you may not be affected at all by self-assessment. If you are a pensioner, basic-rate taxpayer, or if you do not qualify to pay tax at all, then you can probably stop reading now. It is mainly higher-rate taxpayers, the self-employed or generally people with more complicated tax affairs who are affected. If you are unsure, call your tax office and check your position out.Secondly, the 30th (or 29th) is not an absolute deadline in so much that if you miss it, you will not get fined or receive any chasing letters from the Revenue.

But you will have missed your best chance of avoiding a lot of hard work later on. The end of September is the last date on which the Revenue guarantees to do the calculations for you – while you may be lucky and find that a return sent in later (say in November) still has this outcome, you are taking a chance. It might well be that you end up having to take on the UK’s labyrinthine tax system and do the figures yourself.That is something that people are well advised to avoid. Even though siren voices are now to be heard claiming that taxpayers would be best advised to do their own calculations because of Revenue errors, that is bad advice. Of course it makes sense to check the Revenue’s figures, but why volunteer for hard work?It’s far better to use hard copy.