Life is much easier with tools. It’s one of the reasons humans dominate over other animals on earth – tools!
Luckily HMRC like a good tool as well. They aren’t all that great but some are pretty useful. This one on who needs to submit a tax return is pretty good for instance!
Simply slot in what you are up to and it will give you an answer! Perfect!
The one issue of course is that some of the questions are written in basic English which can ofter confuse people. Why? Well as an example one of the questions asks “Did you earn more than £1,000 from working for yourself?”.
It helpfully reminds you that this “This is the amount you earned before taking off any expenses.”.
What it assumes however is that people read what they are filling in and also that the person completing, someone that has probably never completed a tax return before, knows what an allowable expense is. It would be very easy for someone to assume a whole bunch of spend was allowable when it isn’t!
So to summarise the tool is very good but flawed. Like most of their tools. This is why I am always very happen to chat to people to help them make sense of these things.