Coronavirus Update, April
Client Update, 28th April 2020
For the self employed and partnerships, there is an immediate deferral of the 31 July 2020 payment on account to 31 January 2021. This means that the liability for the year ended 5 April 2020 minus the payment on account made on 31 January 2020 becomes payable at the end of January 2021 at which time a first advance payment on account for the year ending 5 April 2021 will also become due.
This might mean that liabilities will become payable at a time when trading will have been affected by the pandemic and might still be suffering.
As part of the accounting process we will be talking to you about your trading projections for the current financial year and the anticipated liabilities arising.
Whilst this is an automatic deferral, it is still possible to make that 31 July payment or make some payments by instalments and your tax team member will be pleased to discuss these options with you.
For those taxpayers who aren’t self employed such as directors and those with tax to pay on 31 July 2020 on income sources such as let property; pensions and savings and investments, there is no deferral but HMRC can be approached to agree a time to pay arrangement. Again, we will be pleased to talk to you about this and take the necessary action with HMRC. I would stress that experience tells me that speaking to HMRC sooner rather than later is advisable.
For those of you in business who are VAT registered, the VAT due in respect quarterly dates ended in February, March and April 2020, and so ordinarily payable between 20 March and 30 June 2020, has been deferred to on or before 31 March 2021. Whilst a welcome concession, it is only a postponement and we await any further relaxations on the VAT side.