r/TaxUK

I’m fairly sure I’m underpaid but here goes…

Started out at local council with apprenticeship. Moved onto AAT and role that had a salary of like 11k haha. This is around 2008

Left for private sector (capita) and they paid for my quals. Got amazing experience etc there. Started at 19l when I left was 32k

Lots of restructuring so left and moved to owner managed firm. Loved it totally diff but shit systems; salary 35k and 20% bonus:

Had to leave here almost a year in as partner at the time bad accident left paralysed so took year out;

Came back to a shite job similar salary but not much to do, then got a job at a start up 45k. Then Covid hit and we were asked to drop a day and 20% salary to avoid redundancies, all agreed. Then my probation ended, expected meeting to be formality as no issues. Fired on the spot as I’m shit apparently.

Got FTC at new balance, went ok but didn’t enjoy. Then moved to TalkTalk. Again was ok, stayed for two years then went on mat leave.

As I was due to go on mat leave PWC approached me, had to decline as Mat leave: they did again later on, this time I went on with the process got the job and been there since 2023. Started at 45k now 49k.

I’m ACCA qualified have been since 2017 and almost 20 years experience in the industry. Am I way underpaid? How can I change it if so?

I have been working at my company for 15 months and I was shocked to see that on my HMRC account there was no current employment details.

I have -
had tax deductions from my pay
A PAYE reference on my P60
Contacted HMRC and confirmed there was no fault on their end

I spoke to my employer about this and he confidently told me that tax gets sent over in bulk annually.

I am very concerned about this and don’t know who to speak to. Is what he’s saying correct? Or do I have a right to follow this up with some sort of report? I was under the impression that my employer had to report my pay and tax contributions to hmrc monthly.

Hi everyone,

I’ve been following this community for a while and was hoping you might be able to point me in the right direction.

I started sole trading in October 2025. In early December 2025, I left the UK and moved to Southeast Asia. I originally wasn’t planning to stay abroad for this long, but circumstances changed and I’m now living overseas.

I’ve spent quite a bit of time researching this — Reddit, various websites, and even Claude — but I’m still struggling to understand how I should approach my UK tax obligations given my situation.

I’ve also contacted a few accounting firms for consultations and am currently waiting to hear back. In the meantime, I’d really appreciate any guidance on what I should be considering, particularly around tax residency, sole trader obligations, and whether/how my overseas move affects my UK tax position.

I’m not looking for free professional advice — I’m more than happy to pay for proper guidance. If you’ve been in a similar situation or know a reliable accountant/tax adviser who specialises in UK expats or people working remotely from overseas, I’d be very grateful for a recommendation.

For context, I currently earn roughly £50–60k per year from two freelance/contracting gigs.

And if this isn’t the right subreddit for this question, apologies — I’d really appreciate it if someone could point me towards the appropriate community.

Thanks in advance!

I am about to sell some RSU shares that were given to me by my US company, I’m in the process of transferring them to a UK company dealing account and will the sell some of them and the rest transfer to a stocks and shares ISA, my question is around capital gains tax I am a higher rate tax payer how do I work out what to pay and how do I pay it with HMRC?

Hi this is my first time doing it, I have been self employed for two months from august 2026 and then had a regular job for a while currently unemployed.

So do I just add together the money I made while I was self employed with the amount on my p60 from my regular job from the "pay" section and then take away the amount from the "tax deduted" section on my p60 - 12570(allowance) and then just pay HMRC 20% on the remainder amount I get?

Or does the amount in the "pay" section on my p60 already contain tax so shall I minus the amount of the total tax I paid from it first and then take away the allowance + tax and continue the calculation from there?

Thanks a lot

For the third year in a row I've been hit with a surprise tax bill due to underpayment. I pay my tax through PAYE through my employer, but every year for the past three years it's been several grand under what it should be and I end up with a large unexpected (though now less unexpected) bill to pay at the end of the year.

Is there any way to get either my employer or HMRC to align with the tax that I actually should be paying? I haven't changed salary, job, or benefits over the past few years, so I'm not sure what's throwing the calculation off. Any guidance would be appreciated...

Something that probably doesn’t get talked about enough in crypto…

What happens to your crypto if you get divorced?

In England and Wales, crypto can form part of the assets considered during a divorce settlement, just like property, savings and investments.

That means Bitcoin sitting in cold storage, Ethereum on an exchange, DeFi positions, NFTs and other digital assets may all need to be disclosed.

And this is where crypto can make things considerably more complicated.

Unlike a traditional investment account, you could have:

• Multiple wallets and exchanges
• Assets spread across different blockchains
• DeFi positions
• Staked assets
• Tokens with limited liquidity
• Years of transactions affecting the tax cost basis
• Huge fluctuations in value between disclosure and settlement

There’s also the question of tax.

Simply agreeing that one person keeps £100,000 of crypto while the other takes £100,000 of another asset doesn't necessarily mean those assets have the same real value.

Why?

Because that £100,000 crypto portfolio could be sitting on a significant unrealised capital gain.

Special Capital Gains Tax rules apply when assets are transferred between separating spouses or civil partners. Since April 2023, no-gain/no-loss treatment can generally continue for up to three tax years after the tax year in which the couple separated, and transfers made under a formal divorce or separation agreement can also qualify.

But no gain/no loss doesn't mean the gain disappears.

The recipient generally inherits the historic acquisition cost, meaning that embedded gain may become relevant when they eventually dispose of the asset.

So if crypto forms part of a divorce settlement, I'd want three things properly understood:

What crypto actually exists.
What is it genuinely worth.
And what tax liability is sitting behind it.

Crypto might be digital.

The divorce — and the tax consequences — are very real.

Hi all. I've googled and reached out to a unbiased financial firm (no reply) and I dont know what's best. Sorry its long but I don't want to drip feed

I've lived in my fathers house for 10 years. I also own my own house but now my adult child lives there. I wont move her out and sell it.

My father wants rid of the house o love in so I'm going to purchase it off him. He is offering it at 1/3rd off the market value. He is also planning to gift all his children a sum of money (I understand this could be subject to inheritance tax if he passes in 7 years)

I understand i will pay stamp duty as its a second home. What I cant get a solid answer is the stamp duty paid on the surveyors valuation? (Lets say 300k) Or what i pay at reduced amount? (200k)

If it is paid on what I pay for it. (I will be getting a mortgage) do I tell my father to keep the cash (let's say 50k) and knock off the price. So the value i purchase it for is now 150k.

What will I pay stamp duty on? I need to know before I decide as I would like a smaller mortgage but if the HMRC ask for it on the surveyors value. I would need the cash to pay the 20k stamp duty 14 days after completion. If its 150k I only need 5k.

I've been told conflicting information. Does anyone experienced this and what stamp duty would I pay?

Do I throw all the money in and get a smaller mortgage cause dont worry you will only pay a small stamp duty?

Or no! Get a mortgage for the 200k and hold back cash as the stamp duty will be based on the surveyors value.

Hi, I’m having a really frustrating issue with HMRC and I’m hoping someone here has experienced something similar.

I’m trying to register as self-employed and get my UTR. Every time I submit the online registration, I later receive an email saying that the address I provided doesn’t match HMRC’s records and they can’t process my application.

I’ve called HMRC several times now and keep getting transferred between different departments. Nobody seems to know exactly what is wrong with the address on their system or how I’m supposed to fix it.

This is quite time-sensitive for me because I need my UTR and Self Assessment documents for an immigration application.

I’m now considering sending the self-employment registration by post instead of doing it online.

Has anyone had this problem before?

Would submitting the registration by post avoid the online address-matching issue, or would HMRC just reject the paper application for the same reason?

If you had an address mismatch with HMRC, how did you eventually get it fixed?

Any advice would be really appreciated because I feel like I’m going in circles with the phone lines.

Hi, I am very new to self-employment so sorry for any obvious questions. But basically I was contracted to do some work by a company (>£1k) and they need me to send an official tax document proving my self-employment status. I applied to be a sole trader (which took way longer than it should have due to HMRC) thinking that I would get some kind of document proving my status but I don’t see anything I can use on my account. If anyone has any tips for me AT ALL it would be very much appreciated 🙏🙏 This company has been waiting since June so I feel really bad about it😵‍💫🥲

My self-employed (CIS if relevant) partner bought a new works van in the last tax year with own private money, and is a bit unclear as to how this should be declared on the tax return.

I believe it needs to be included in the ‘capital allowances’ section, but he has concerns as he recalls from some years ago there was something to do with depreciating costs.

Is it as straightforward as including the full cost of the van in capital allowances, or is there anything else he should consider?

Many thanks in advance!

Two questions if you don’t mind:

1. The liability each year is above £1000. The interest calculation seemed pretty high so I called HMRC (twice!) and both times they said I don’t need to include interest for the payments on account, is this correct?
2. The first box on the disclosure says “income for the year” then proceeds to ask for the tax figure and so on. Do they mean profit for the year in the first box? Where should I put the breakdown since they don’t ask for expenses? Should I just included it in the second text box where they ask for the type of income?

Thanks!

Had a conversation with another accountant about crypto tax today…

Accountant: “I use Koinly for crypto CGT disclosures on Self Assessment. It’s super simple really — basically the same as getting a GIA report for investments.”

Me: “Hmm… I wouldn’t say it’s quite the same. Koinly and other crypto consolidation tools can be wrong if the data hasn’t been properly reconciled.”

Accountant: “I’ve always found Koinly accurate.”

Me: “Interesting, because it’s actually one of the platforms I often have to do the most work on to reconcile properly.”

Accountant: “I did a full analysis and it was accurate.”

Me: “Did you reconcile it?”

Accountant: “Yes.”

Me: “Back to the exchange and wallet data?”

Accountant: “No.”

Me: “What did you reconcile it to?”

Accountant: “To itself.”

Me: 🤦🏾‍♀️🤦🏾‍♀️🤦🏾‍♀️

And therein lies the problem.

If you reconcile Koinly… to Koinly, you haven’t independently checked whether Koinly is right.

Crypto tax software is incredibly useful, but it only works with the information it has pulled in and the way it has interpreted that information.

APIs can miss transactions. Transfers can be misclassified. Wallets can be missing. DeFi transactions can be interpreted incorrectly. Cost bases can be affected by incomplete history.

A report looking internally consistent does not necessarily mean the underlying data is complete.

For me, reconciliation means going back to the actual exchanges, wallets and blockchain activity and making sure what is sitting in the tax software reflects what really happened.

That’s why I really don’t think a Koinly report should be treated in the same way as a GIA tax report from an investment platform.

Koinly is a tool.

A very useful tool.

But it isn’t the audit evidence for its own output. 😂

In June I received a message from HMRC informing me that I had underpaid PAYE tax from the 2025-2026 tax year. This was because my gross income had surpassed £100k but my tax code had not been adjusted to reflect the loss of Personal Allowance.I decided to pay it to them as a lump sum rather than have it deducted from future earnings.

I have now just registered for self-assessment and am in the process of filing my 2025-2026 tax return. There is a section where it asks for PAYE gross income and tax paid from my P60 from that year. However, as the P60 doesn't contain the extra payment I made, the final calculation wants me to pay that extra amount again. Should I just add that amount to the 'tax paid' section, or is there some other way of making it account for this?

Hello, I have recently moved to the uk as a spouse of a British national. I have a standard 1257L tax code. I received my first month's pay and I have paid national insurance but no tax has been taken from my pay. My employer says this is normal and I won't pay until after 12 k. This doesn't feel correct to me. Help please

Trying to understand how investments made before moving to the UK (>5 years ago) will be taxed. Specifically:

- Are equities taxed like UK's offshore equities (dividends at dividend rates, Capital Gains at CGT rates)?

- Are mutual and debt funds taxed as offshore, non-reporting funds (entire gain taxed as income on marginal rate upon disposal)?

- Are Indian Market ETFs (non-UCITS) taxed similarly to mutual and debt funds?

And what strategies are considered to optimize tax efficiency?

My background is private equity at a £1b+ AUM single family office and i also run my own company in Cyprus. Happy to educate henries

Background

A & B (siblings) and C (B's wife) are joint owners of an inherited residential property in England. The house has been renovated into three flats. A lives in the property so benefits from PRR regardless. Ownership is governed by a Trust Deed under which A owns Flat 1, and B&C together own Flats 2 & 3. B&C intent to lease out their two flats.

The house has been completely renovated and the increase in value is significant.

Issue

Ownership is split only by the Trust Deed and the parties are looking to formalise the arrangement through creation of a Share of Freehold by granting long leaseholds (999 years) which reflect their respective beneficial interets i.e. lease to A for Flat 1, leases to B&C for Flats 2 & 3.

Our concern is that because the parties are connected, any disposal is deemed at market value (s18) so the lease grants could trigger CGT even though nothing has economically, benefically or practically changed. Equally, B&C are freeholders so they are effectively making a disposal to themselves which should not incur CGT(?).

Is there a 'disposal' for CGT purposes?

Is there an argument that this is simply a re-characterisation of existing beneficial interests rather than a disposal at all? Does anyone know an authority to base the interpretation that there is no disposal for CGT. Or, if CGT is incurred, is there a relief available?

Our accountant has not provided any clear guidance and we are chasing him but have not got much beyond 'it might incur CGT'. Our property solicitor is very heavy on disclaimers that she cannot provide tax advice, obviously for liability reasons. Is specialist tax advice necessary here? If so where would be the best place to look for this?

Thank you very much in advance for any guidance.