davidkayla

Hi,

I am a UK expat who has been living in Australia for 10 years.
To submit my UK tax return for 2012 to 2013 I got onto the HMRC website and logged on using my username and password from 2008 (when I was last requested to submit a return).

The site populated my Australian address into the address fields and allowed me to submit it. I made a 5000 pounds profit from my uk property and the site said I had nothing to pay in tax. The home page says that I am up to date with my tax affairs and I have nothing to pay.

Now I have become aware that non-residents are not supposed to do this. Non-residents are supposed to complete a paper based return.

What is my best course of action? To do nothing and see if they notice or to contact them immediately and probably be fined now for a late paper based submission?
Regards,
David.

DaveandLinda

I would advise you to contact them as soon as possible. You may have to pay the fine and lodge an appeal later. They charge interest on every day that the fine remains unpaid. I find it ludicrous that in this day and age we cannot submit an online return, especially as the post takes ages to get to Australia.

davidkayla

You might be interested to hear that I contacted HMRC and they said that I should submit SA109 (non-resident pages) now (by post) with 'Amendment' written at the top.

I asked her about the fine and she said that because I had submitted my tax return online I had met the reporting dates for online submission and consequently didn't have to pay a fine.

(But your suggestion to contact them immediately was the correct course of action).

louie

What makes you think you cannot file online? This confirms that you can.... "Please note that there are many benefits to filing online rather than using paper and you can still choose to do this if you're sent a paper return."

davidkayla

Well that's an interesting question. The answer is that when I tried to do it online there was a warning not to proceed if I was a non resident. I am unable to tell you what this said exactly because I have now completed my return (and I ignored the warning).

While I was doing the return I wondered if I would be able to submit it from Australia. I noticed that my address had been auto populated in the address fields except for my post code. I tried to include my Australian post code in the post code field and I got an error saying that that wasn't a UK post code. So I just didn't include my post code. I remember thinking to myself that they want a UK address but they are just trying to police it by testing the post code.

Those two things made me suspect that nonresident submission was not permitted.

I would be interested to hear of other Australian people submitting online and whether they had any issues.

louie

Well I am a tax accountant, doing UK tax returns every day. We don't use the same software as you but this is the first I've heard of there being an issue filing online, certainly we don't have a problem using professional software.

As long as you completed everything you were supposed to (I don't actually know how the Revenue's own software works having never used it), I wouldn't be in slightest bit concerned about having submitted online.

OzSheila

I use this software to lodge my UK ITR from Oz:
http://www.andica.com/andica_taxation_software.html

Bermudashorts

Louie - I have not looked for a while, but certainly last time I did, there was definitely a warning not to proceed with an online submission if a non resident.

spouse of scouse

Reading Louie's link, it seems that non-resident tax returns can be completed online by people registered with HMRC Online Services, but they need to purchase commercial software to do so. That might be the OP's issue, that they tried to complete their return using the HMRC free software, which looks to only be suitable for an uncomplicated, resident tax return.

louie

Louie should have read the whole of the information in her link.... looks like you have cracked the mystery SOS!

Bearing that in mind, the OP was given good advice by HMRC (very unusual that). The technical word is "repair" rather than "amendment" but I'm sure they will get the gist of what you want to do.

spouse of scouse

SOS needs to get a life, instead of reading HMRC web pages at midnight on a stinking hot Perth night

Alfresco

Well I submitted mine last week online without any special software and stated I was non resident. I never received any warnings or anything and it submitted ok.

Now I'm just waiting to be arrested.

Jilliebee

We use TaxCalc software to submit ours. You definitely can't use the HMRCs basic return if,you are non resident.

TakenThePlunge

I've submitted 3 tax returns using only the hmrc website and have never had any issues.

Alfresco

Me too. All three of mine were done like that.