Select a region
It's really important that we all check our coding notices and personal tax reliefs are up to date throughout the year - to prevent any nasty shocks when our tax returns are assessed, says the Director of Revenue Services.
During a wide ranging interview with Express earlier this week, Nicky Forshaw explained how staff are working through the backlog in assessing returns, how work to encourage more people to file their returns online is progressing, and how we can all work together to ensure accurate information is filed and assessed.
That is important, said Ms Forshaw, in ensuring fewer people receive large bills when their tax returns are assessed.
"It's important that customers are submitting their returns so that we can make sure that information we're sending out is correct," she explained.
"You have the coding notices and the interim assessments, which is forward looking and then the return which is backward looking. It's important that all of that information is there otherwise some of the information going out in the in the future might not be accurate."
Inaccurate information collated through these stages could lead to people being sent tax bills - or even rebates - incorrectly. It also means more staff time is taken up in assessing the returns to ensure that doesn't happen.
Where tax bills and rebates are issued, the money is expected to be paid - or refunded - within weeks usually.
Pictured: 2023 tax returns must be submitted by 31 January, 2025. Help is available for those who need it, especially around filling in the new look paper forms or an online return.
"Once an assessment has been issued, we aim to get any repayments out within four weeks," Ms Forshaw said. "Repayments are run on a weekly basis service so generally they should just flow through.
"I go back to our issuing of coding notices to employed individuals, which we send out in November and December time each year. That includes the personal relief that customers should be entitled to and includes any income where taxes are deducted at source. So it's really important that customers check those to make sure that the right amount of tax has been deducted throughout the year so that they don't end up with a bill or repayment owing.
"Similarly, in term of assessments going out in that vein, if your income is not deducted at source, like a pension or a rental property, then we'll issue an Interim Assessment and customers are able to tell us these figures are right or wrong.
"So it's really important that customers check them because that is how we monitor that we're collecting the right amount of tax during the year that the tax is due, and as it goes along, and that that would negate the sort of large bills or repayments that some customers have received."
The issuing of coding notices and interim assessments also feeds into the island's public finances, explained Ms Forshaw.
She said that the island's income is predicted through coding notice and assessments, with that information then used to set the different budgets that public sector services spend each year.
The overall amount collected in income tax each year varies with what is predicted only slightly, meaning the majority of rebates and tax bills issued related to relatively small figures, and that also means the island's finances - such as the recent accounts which showed a gross income through income tax of £334.9million for 2023.
That was up 8.7% on 2022 - representing a 1.4% real terms increase driven by wage inflation (median earnings up 7.0%) and employment which increased by 0.9% with 31,592 people employed or self-employed at the end of December 2023.
Nonagenarians taking to the net
Backlog remains as staff "work as hard as they can"
Comments
Comments on this story express the views of the commentator only, not Bailiwick Publishing. We are unable to guarantee the accuracy of any of those comments.