At Minerva Accountants we aim to get everything completed in plenty of time so that the team aren’t missing out on Christmas with their families or working overtime in January. (Sometime there’s a genuine reason but usually it’s because clients haven’t got their act together) Our best season yet we had everything completed by 8 January and we almost beat this last year with all but one couple done by 31 December.
Most of our tax returns are for the directors of our business clients so we already have information about their salaries and dividends but we still need to check whether they have other income.
This is the checklist that we ask them to complete:
- P60 or P45 for each employment
- State pension received
- Other pensions received
- P11D or other benefits in kind (many small companies don’t realise that they need to complete a P11D)
- Professional subscriptions paid (other than through a limited company)
- We send a separate list for self-employed accounts information
- Interest
- Dividends
- Child benefit received
- Partner’s income if over £60k (higher interest child benefit charge) or under £12570 (for marriage tax allowance)
- Number of children
- Have you sold a residential property this year? (Estate agents and solicitors still don’t seem to be warning people that there are circumstance in which they may need to report and pay capital gains tax within 60 days)
- Other income eg capital items or foreign income
- Pension contributions
- Student loan plan
- Gift aided donations to UK charities (many people try to claim donations to good causes which are not registered charities or which are registered overseas)
- Copy of latest tax code letter for the year
- Do you use your home for business? Do you have separate business premises? (we send a separate spreadsheet to calculate any claim)
- Property income and expenses
- What proportion of the property do you own (and what proportion is shown in the number above!)
- Anything else we need to know?
We send out regular reminders.
This year we are considering offering an express service of a 1 month turnaround. Our normal turnaround is up to 3 months (as we fit the smaller tax returns around the bigger accounts jobs). Not many people will need to upgrade unless they need their SA302 for a mortgage but it will be free for anybody uploading their information before 31 July, 50% extra after that, or 100% extra for a 1 week turnaround (because this really does disrupt our workflows.