Who needs to pay personal tax

UK individuals who are registered for self-assessment must pay their personal tax liabilities by 31st January each year.

A further payment maybe due by 31st July if you are required to make payments on account.

 

How to pay your personal tax liability using your mobile phone?

In our opinion, the most convenient way to pay your personal tax liability is using the HMRC app on your mobile phone. This is the method we recommend if you have a personal tax liability due.

You will need to have the HMRC app and a banking app installed on your mobile phone. You will also need to have a personal tax account, so you can login to your HMRC account.

 

Other options available to pay your tax liability

There are 4 further options available to pay your personal tax liability. They are as follows:

  • Personal Debit Card
  • Electronic Banking
  • Visiting your Bank
  • Posting a Cheque

 

What you need to pay personal tax

To your pay personal tax you need 2 pieces of information:

  • Your unique tax reference (known as a UTR). It is 10 digits long and is often written as 2 blocks of 5, e.g 12345 67890. You will find this number on any self-assessment correspondence you have received from HMRC such as payslips, letters, etc. It will also be included on your personal tax return.
  • The amount of personal tax due. If you underpay, HMRC will charge interest and may even charge penalties.

Tip: When paying personal tax HMRC request the letter K (as a capital), is added to the UTR. Therefore your payment reference using the UTR above becomes 1234567890K. The K is not part of your UTR.

 

After you’ve made the payment

Unfortunately things do go wrong and we do see payments incorrectly allocated by HMRC. Often this is just a glitch in their systems and is easily rectified.

Therefore to ensure the payment has been made. The first thing we recommend is to check the money has left your bank account.

If you have an HMRC online account you can check to see if the payment has been allocated correctly on there. You may need to wait a few days for the account to be updated.

 

Tip: We recommend paying HMRC using a bank account in your personal name. Often clients will pay Limited company taxes using personal bank accounts and vice versa. We recommend you avoid doing this as it increases the likelihood of errors occurring.