The Spookiest Reasons People Don’t Register for Self Assessment by the 5th October Deadline!

So you’re newly self employed – that’s great! Did you know you need to register for Self Assessment? You can’t just show up ready for the 31st January deadline, you know. You’ll find you have no account from which to complete your Self Assessment Tax Return!  

Every year this fact trips up the newly self employed, that’s why we’re here to remind you to register for Self Assessment by the 5th October this year!! 

And there’s really no good excuse not to register, it takes 5 minutes, you only need a few pieces of information, and whatsmore – if you don’t register you could be facing a fine, scary eh?

But if there ever was an excuse to miss the October deadline, we’d like to think one of the below would be acceptable…

 

Zombie Apocalypse

Hot on the heels of a real life pandemic and the discovery of a ‘zombie virus’ frozen in permafrost earlier this year, it’s a distinct possibility! So if there is a zombie apocalypse between now and 5th October we’d forgive you for not registering for Self Assessment – afterall if the movies have taught us anything, it’s that the power will probably go out immediately and lines of communication will be difficult at best. 

Excuse rating: 8/10.

 

Home Haunting

If you currently live in a haunted house, or are planning a move in the very near future, we could understand if life is a bit more hectic than usual in a haunted house. But it will all depend on the type of ghouls you’re dealing with. If your ghost(s) are on the scale of ‘friendly – a mild annoyance’ then you should really be able to carry on as normal. But if your ghost(s) are more the poltergeist variety that turn your house upside down and send you to a different place in space or time, we could see how getting to the computer for 5 minutes might be problematic! 

Excuse rating: 1/10 for an easy-going haunting, 10/10 for full-blown Haunting of Hill House type of thing.

 

Alien Abduction

If little green men show up between now and the 5th October to beem you up (Scotty) then we think this is a pretty good excuse as to why you couldn’t register for your Self Assessment Tax Return. Unless the aliens have great WiFi… If this is the case, please try to explain to them that it’s actually quite important that you just get 5 mins on your smartphone to get this one thing ticked off your list before they begin their experiments on you and drop you off again at Area 51.

Excuse rating: 7/10 (maybe more depending on the WiFi situation)

 

AI Takes Over

If my neighbour in the bunker isn’t actually ‘over reacting’ and there is an AI revolution on the cards in the next few weeks, then that’s a fairly good excuse for missing the deadline. Afterall, in the last few years we’ve seen AI develop its own language on multiple occasions, and some very smart people have expressed concerns that it could take over our lives. And now we’re even talking about AI’s role in everyday things like accounting or maybe even the business you started recently! Scarily, we could all be out of jobs and at the mercy of the machines any day now! But I suppose it depends which direction the AI is planning to take us all – world destruction?? Probably not… and even then, society probably won’t break down immediately anyway, so if we’re not worshiping our AI overlord by now, you can probably still make that 5th October deadline.

Excuse rating: 2/10

 

Fell Into A Portal To A Different Dimension

Don’t feel embarrassed, this could happen to anyone at any time. But if you’re unlucky enough to either open up a portal and fall in, or stumble across a hard-to-see portal, we’ll forgive you for missing the deadline. I mean it’s stressful enough having to: 1) deal with life in another dimension – nothing can prepare you for that!, and 2) trying to find your way back to this plane of existence, it’s not like there’s a ladder, is it? 

Excuse rating 10/10

 

How To Register For Self Assessment

If you have 5 minutes, and these items on you, it really is very simple:

• Address details
• Date of birth
• National Insurance number
• Contact details
• Name of your business
• Date that your business started

And here’s the link to Register for Self Assessment.

 

And if you’ve enjoyed this blog but you’re still thinking ‘yeah, but my business isn’t making any money so I won’t bother registering this year’ think again! If you have any source of income other than employed income you’ll likely need to register now, and complete your Self Assessment Tax Return before 31st Jan 2024 – even if you owe no tax! 

So many newly self employed people are tripped up by this fact and receive a fine – even though they never would have owed tax!

And if you’re panicking about completing your Tax Return and want some help from our accountants you’ll need to get in touch ASAP, because we get booked up for Self Assessment returns earlier and earlier every year. So contact us now if you need help!