HMRC To Make Personal Tax Account Mandatory

Just received this email from my HR department

Over the next few years HMRC will be moving towards a digital tax system where individuals are encouraged to take ownership of their tax affairs. This has already begun as you can set up your “Personal Tax Account” online, similar to having an online bank account. It’s quite an easy process but you will need your NI number and a copy of a recent payslip. Just follow the link: Personal tax account: sign in or set up - GOV.UK

You can use your account to:-

  • check your Income Tax estimate and tax code
  • fill in, send and view a personal tax return
  • claim a tax refund
  • check and manage your tax credits
  • view your National Insurance record
  • check your State Pension
  • track tax forms that you’ve submitted online
  • check or update your Marriage Allowance
  • tell HMRC about a change of address
  • check or update benefits you get from work, e.g. company car details and medical insurance
State Pension Forecasts For those of a certain age, (myself included), one of the facilities with an online account is to get a State Pension forecast, the earliest you can get it and if you can improve it. You can also obtain this without creating an account via www.gov.uk/check-state-pension (It would be helpful to have your payslips, passport and/or driving licence to hand to do this).

Personal Savings Allowance
From 6 April 2016 the new Personal Savings Allowance was introduced.

This means that up to £1,000 of savings income (e.g. interest) will be tax-free for basic rate taxpayers (generally those whose total income is at or below £43,000). Higher rate taxpayers (those with total income between £43,001 and £150,000) will get up to £500 of savings income tax-free and additional rate taxpayers (total income above £150,000) won’t get an allowance.

Prior to the introduction of Personal Savings Allowance, banks and building societies were required to take basic rate tax from most account interest they paid. They have now stopped doing this because approximately 95% of taxpayers have no tax to pay on their account interest.

There is no need to claim the allowance, and no action for most savers to take, as all of their savings income will be within their Personal Savings Allowance.

For those with savings income above their Personal Savings Allowance, HMRC will, where possible, collect any tax due by changing their tax code. If any of your employees believe that changes to their tax code will result in them paying too much tax over the year, or wish to discuss alternative means by which they can settle any tax liability on their savings income, please ask them to contact HMRC. Those who currently declare their savings income on a Self-Assessment tax return should continue to do so.

I know it’s possible to do a lot of this through the HMRC portal already (although they don’t make it easy at all), but I knew nothing of this upcoming change.

I have pretty much no experience of managing my own taxes and I’m sure everybody who has always paid Income Tax via PAYE and not dealt with any other forms of tax will be equally confused if not more so.

Hopefully Monzo will come to the rescue and make it easy for us as I don’t place much trust HMRC to do so, even though I’m told “It’s quite an easy process”.

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HMRC/Your Employer still manage your PAYE tax, however it’s now submitted in real-time which means you can check online that the right tax is being taken etc.

It makes it a lot easier to spot issues, but you’re not going to be expected to do the legwork for your tax so don’t panic :slight_smile:

I’m already using my personal tax account

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Ah! Thanks for that. Panic over! :smile:

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Thanks for the heads up, I didn’t realise they’d done this. One thing I will say for this government is that they’re definitely trying to improve their services online. However, they’re destroying the country to the point where it won’t be worth checking this stuff out :frowning:

Good job I’m not relying on this to be my main income when I retire. Hopefully my NHS pension won’t have vanished by the time I retire…