Should you be filing a self-assessment form?

Earn over £50,000? Got children? If so, you could be about to enter a whole new world of administrative irritation. A brief from accountants Baker Tilly reminds us about the new limits on child benefit. In families where one partner has more than £50,000 of income, child benefit is now withdrawn on a sliding scale, until, at more than £60,000, none is payable.

You can, if you like, just ask for your payments to be stopped (and if you earn over £60,000 and expect to continue to earn over £60,000, you should). If you don't do that, you have to pay any excess received back through the tax system. That means that if you haven't already registered for self-assessment, you need to do so by 6 October or risk being fined.

To Baker Tilly, this seems a bit nuts. The child benefit change only came in in January, so for those with two children and an income of more than £60,000, the total HM Revenue & Customs can reclaim is £438. If the parent is only earning £51,000, the tax charge would be a mere £43. "Hardly worth the time and effort from HMRC to deal with a self-assessment tax form."

Subscribe to MoneyWeek

Subscribe to MoneyWeek today and get your first six magazine issues absolutely FREE

Get 6 issues free

Sign up to Money Morning

Don't miss the latest investment and personal finances news, market analysis, plus money-saving tips with our free twice-daily newsletter

Don't miss the latest investment and personal finances news, market analysis, plus money-saving tips with our free twice-daily newsletter

Sign up

There is already a system in place whereby HMRC can make adjustments to people's tax codes and reclaim up to £3,000 in unpaid tax from their salaries. Surely, says Baker Tilly, this would make more sense, given the small amounts?

But I wonder if there isn't more to it. While the sums to be collected in this tax year might seem small, they will be quadrupled next year (when the new tax system covers a full tax year). So it makes sense to get people in the system now.

But it is also worth noting that a good number of those earning £50,000 and over should probably already be filling in self-assessment forms. It is likely that they have some kind of non-salaried income (rents, dividend income, bond coupons, interest on savings accounts and so on).

Most people in higher-income brackets have some kind of income beyond their base salary these days. This is a pretty straightforward way to encourage them to come clean, something that the Chartered Institute of Taxation hints at in its own note on the subject, with the suggestion that, once in the self-assessment system, people "will also need to declare all their income, such as investment income, and may be liable to pay further higher rate tax on that".

Look at it like this and it makes more sense. A sledgehammer to crack a nut? Maybe. But while Britain is in the grip of a sharp cyclical recovery, the same cannot be said for our debt levels. The government needs all the tax revenue it can get.