Whilst not strictly ‘QuickFile’ related I’m hoping that there is someone in the community who may be able to quickly offer me some advice.
My wife and I are recently self employed in a partnership running our dog grooming salon on a part-time basis around the school hours etc.
I registered earlier in the year on the Self-Assessment website and received a UTR letter asking for completion for the period 06/04/14 - 05/04/15.
Having tried on a few occasions to complete the return online, I keep receiveing an error saying that I am unable to send the return online through the portal and require specialist software.
I recently had the chance to compare my letter with that of a friends parents who are also a self-employed partnership, runing a small music store and noticed that my return is listed in the full name of our business rather than our individual name(s) etc.
I believe that I/we/HMRC may have actually created our Self Assessment account as a LTD Partnership and this is also probably why we are encounering errors when trying to use the online HMRC portal.
Now (the reason for my post! ) over the last few weeks I have been trying almost daily to get through to HMRC on the SA Helpline (0300 200 3310) without success.
It seems to be a battle of whits Vs. my phone battery - my longest so far is 1hr 10mins before the battery died, but I have waited on average 40mins+ before I can’t take the hold messages & music any longer
Looking online through a Google search it seems this is an ongoing problem outside of the annual returns window - I genuinely feel sorry for accountants & bookeepers!
Does anyone know of any other way I may be able to get some assistance reviewing my Self Assessment account? Is there a better way to contact HMRC?
From my recollection everything I had sent to me regarding any limited companies I was involved with had Company Name Ltd/LLP or whatever on the letter. My sole trader letters from HMRC also have the business name, minus the Ltd/LLP so I think the letter comparison with your friend is a red herring.
My understanding is that it’s not possible to submit a partnership tax return via the standard portal. As a partnership you have to do a partnership return for the business and also individual SA returns for each partner including their share of the partnership’s profit or loss. The individual returns can be submitted via the portal but the partnership return requires special software or a paper submission.
I can only relate what has been sent to me in a similar situation. I have just set up in partnership to run a shop, I have an employed job which is taxed through PAYE (I haven’t previously had to do Self Assessment), my partner is already self employed as a sole trader.
I registered the partnership online for self assessment with me as the “nominated partner”, and about two months later HMRC sent me two letters. One was my personal UTR for my own SA return. The other letter gave the partnership UTR, and asked me to send in (by post) a form SA401 for each partner in the partnership, including myself, so they can register the members of the partnership.
I presume that for any partner who is not already on Self Assessment, the act of sending in the SA401 will trigger registration and cause HMRC to send out the relevant UTR.
Come tax return time there will be three tax returns to send in
the partnership return giving the total net profit for the business
my personal return, which will include my share of the partnership profits and my PAYE employment income (which has already been taxed)
my partner’s personal return, which will include their share of the partnership profits, plus their sole trader profits.
We have an accountant, so I’m not sure about which things can be submitted through the web portal and which can’t - we let the accountant submit it all through their software.
I know this was quite a few months ago and you may have already resolved it, but just in case you haven’t (and the electronic deadline is looming) here’s some info.
Both you and your wife will have to fill in individual separate Self Assessment returns.
One of you has to be the ‘Nominated Partner’ who is responsible for completing all official correspondence and returns.
You will each have your own UTR (Unique Taxpayer Reference) and online HMRC account to submit your returns, but you also have to inform HMRC of the partnership and the Partnership becomes an individual entity itself and will receive a UTR.
I haven’t actually submitted a Partnership Return yet as we are in the current year, but I can see that it is a service that I can enrol on my online gov.uk account, so I’m assuming you will be able to submit the return online if you enrol that service on to your account (being the Nominated Partner).
I hope this info is of some help to you or anyone else looking for partnership info in the future (as I was searching for when I found your thread).
Please note, I’m not a tax expert, this is purely based on the research I have done on the HMRC website today for my own business. The link I provided has other links within the page that should give you lots of more detailed help, should you need it.
Yes this is the position we are now in thank you - I have earmarked the tail end of this week (pun intended!) and the weekend to have a stab at our first submissions.
This is what turned out to be the source of the problem - there was an issue with our own individual UTR’s and despite completing the forms and on-line requests, the system was only able to automatically generate the partnership UTR letters, hence my initial confusion.
After persevering with the helpline for many more weeks I hit gold early one Friday morning and got through within 30secs!
My wife’s UTR letter came through a few weeks later and after some more badgering I got given a completly new UTR reference number back in November.
Fingers crossed I can now login in and get the returns submitted.
As the old slogan goes…Tax doesn’t have to be taxing - we just like to make it so!
) over the last few weeks I have been trying almost daily to get through to HMRC on the SA Helpline (0300 200 3310) without success.
