"Ronald Raygun" wrote in message
...
Ian Jackson wrote:

In message , Tony Bryer
writes
On Thu, 24 Feb 2011 13:04:38 +0000 Tim Watts wrote :
So to the Tax Office: *Bllrrrp!* for all the swearing you made me do.

I was advised to ring another department to aks them to stop sending
tax
returns as we're all PAYE here (this stems back to when I was self
employed in 2006) but as they seem to keep owing me money, albeit is
small amounts, perhaps I won't... Makes you wonder about the tax system
and PAYE though...

HMRC sent me a letter here in Australia reminding me that I had to submit
a return by the due date. I wrote to them pointing out I had lived here
since 2008 and had no UK income to declare. They said that I had ticked a
box on the previous return saying I expected to have taxable income in
2009-10 and I therefore needed to submit a return and since the due date
had passed, I needed to file this online.

The free HMRC online facility is not available to those living outside
the
UK so I ended up having to pay £20 for TaxCalc so as to be able to submit
a nil return. Hopefully I won't have to repeat this next year, but didn't
see any question in TaxCalc re 2010-11 income.

Could you not have downloaded the online PDF form, filled it in, and
posted it? That's what I did. Or had you gone past the 'do-it-by-post'
deadline?

If you re-read carefully, that's what he said.

But it doesn't make sense to say that "because the due date [for the
paper return] had passed, he needed to file online". Because not
everyone is computer literate and has access to a computer, it follows
that not everyone *can* file online. Therefore HMRC *must* accept
paper returns even after the paper return deadline, in the same way as
they will obviously accept online returns after the online deadline.
The only difference is that late returns attract a penalty. So what?
The penalty is reduced to zero if the tax due is zero.

It seems highly dubious that if HMRC disallow direct computer access
from abroad for online filing in the normal way, that they should
nevertheless allow access from abroad using a third party product.

I don't think that it disallows access, what they may do is not post out the
PIN code to other than UK addresses.

tim