In an agent update published earlier this year HMRC wrote that as part of EU Exit contingency planning, a change would be made to the timings for sending notification of Self Assessment penalties. The £100 penalty notices are normally issued in February but HMRC suggested that they might be delayed as late as the end of April. It has now been confirmed that HMRC began issuing penalty notices earlier this month and all penalty notices are expected to have been sent by 12 April 2019.
Jon Stride, Co-Chair of the Association of Taxation Technician’s Technical Steering Group, said:
‘The ATT is pleased that HMRC have now started to issue penalty notices and have not delayed the exercise to the end of April, which was originally a possibility. However, it will take HMRC until 12 April 2019 to issue all the penalty letters. This gives taxpayers a little over two weeks to submit their return before the daily penalty regime commences.’
If you do not file and pay before 1 May 2019 then you will face far greater penalties. A daily penalty of £10 per day, up to a maximum of £900 (90 days) will be charged from 1 May 2019. Further penalties then apply if your return is still outstanding for more than 6 months after the 31 January 2019 filing deadline. From 1 August 2019 you will be charged a penalty of the greater of £300 or 5% of the tax due. If your return still remains outstanding one year after the filing deadline, then further penalties will be charged from 1 February 2020.