Just a minor rant.
Because I know what I'm like, I pay my corporation tax on a monthly standing order to HMRC in advance (it's less painful that way). I use the correct payment reference for the correct tax year. This worked fine in 2012. I've just filed my 2013 accounts and put the payments on account on the CT600 showing a small balance to pay. HMRC paper statement comes in showing I owe the whole amount. I check online and its sitting as "unallocated." Even though you can only pay on a certain AP.
So now I need to phone them up and get them to sort it out. Waste of time.
Here endeth the grumpy pregnant lady's rant.
Replies (8)
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Just a thought but wouldn't it be just as easy and more lucrative to transfer money every month to a high interest savings account for the company and then pay from this to HMRC annually?
Less risk of something going wrong as less transfers to HMRC, and a bit of interest for the company.
That aside I can of course see why you are annoyed at HMRC!
High interest!?!
I recommended that a cash-rich client pay their CT liability several months early. Result was about £45 interest received from HMRC instead of about £5 from the bank.
This early payment was made in one go and correctly allocated to the correct CT AP, so in my example no issues arose.
I am surprised (and disappointed) that HMRC can apparently mess-up when CT is prepaid by individual instalments.
Based on this occurence I would recommend regularly checking correct allocation of CT payments by HMRC if prepaid by instalments.
I am no financial advisor so to be honest I don't know the interest rates available on corporate accounts - but I thought the credit rate of interest from HMRC was something like 1% and that there would be better corporate savings accounts available than out there somewhere?
I feared I was saying something so obvious I must be wrong and I guess that was the case!!
£45 better than £9
Yes, HMRC paid £45 and bank deposit a/c been paying 0.1% which might have been £9.
It is often overlooked that Ltd Co.s cannot get interest rates anything like as good as individuals.
Forgive me for pressing a point where I must be wrong given all the opposing comments; but I googled "corporate savings accounts" and the first link I found was this:
http://moneyfacts.co.uk/business/business-savings-accounts/
Every account shown on there is paying more than 1% isn't it? I haven't looked at the terms.
I appreciate a corporate won't get the same rates as an individual.