A Content Creator’s Guide To Tax Returns: The Easiest Way To Complete Your Self Assessment

Disclaimer: This post is for informational purposes only and does not constitute financial advice. If you need additional assistance, HMRC has a guide for self assessment tax returns which you can find here, as well as a page for online help and support.

I’m stepping away from the beauty content for a sec to talk about something a little less fun: tax returns. If you’re a blogger, Instagrammer or any other kind of content creator then at this time of year you’re probably counting down the days until your self-assessment tax return is due. Since 2021 was my first full year blogging, this is my first time submitting a tax return and I’ve been stressing about it for months!

Now I’ve finally done it, I wanted to share some of the things I learnt along the way and talk a bit about TaxScouts which I used to help complete my tax return.

So, if you’re a content creator who wants to learn a little more about the tax return process, and are perhaps looking for a TaxScouts review, keep reading!

How do I know if I need to submit a tax return?

UK residents get a £1000 tax-free trading allowance per financial year. You’re not taxed on income below this threshold which means you generally don’t need to declare it. When your income goes over £1000, that’s when you’ll need to register for self-assessment and complete a tax return. There are some circumstances, however, where even if your income falls under the £1000 allowance you have to declare it, so it always pays to check!

For content creators, the key thing to keep in mind here is that gifted items can also be considered a form of income, especially when a brand has sent you a product in return for a service (such as writing a blog post or creating an Instagram reel). Payments-in-kind need to be declared in the same way as your regular self-employment income, so make sure to tot up the monetary value of the gifted products you’re receiving throughout the tax year. You’ll be glad you’ve done this when the time to submit your tax return rolls around!

What constitutes a tax year? And what’s the deadline for submitting my return?

The UK tax year runs from the 6th of April to the 5th of April the following year. The 2022/2023 tax year, for example begins on 6th April 2022 and ends on 5th April 2023.

Your tax return actually isn’t due at the end of the tax year – it needs to be submitted by 31st January the year after. So your 2022/2023 tax return would need to be submitted by 31st January 2024 (that is if you’re submitting online, paper returns need to be sent in a little earlier).

How to complete your tax return

1. Register with HMRC for self assessment

If this is your first time submitting a tax return, you’ll need to let HMRC know in advance by registering for self assessment. This typically needs to be done by 5th October following the tax year for which you’re planning on submitting your return. So, for example, if you’re submitting a tax return for the 2022 – 2023 financial year, the deadline for enrolling is 5th October 2023.

2. Set up your Government Gateway account

When you’ve registered for self assessment, you’ll be sent a letter containing your Unique Taxpayer Reference (UTR). This is a 10-digit number that’s used to identify all individual taxpayers. This can take up to 10 days to arrive so don’t worry if you don’t receive it straight away!

Once you have your UTR, you’ll be able to set up your Government Gateway account. To complete the set-up of your account, you’ll have to wait for an activation code in the post. Again, this can take up to 10 days so make sure you start this process early!

3. Begin your tax return

As soon as your account is set up you can get to work on your tax return. The most obvious way to do this is through the HMRC Online Services portal, though you can also request a paper form if your prefer. HMRC provides instructions that will guide you through the process of filing your self assessment tax return, so – if you’ve kept a record of all your income and expenses over the past financial year – this should be relatively straightforward.

If your income is all related to content creation, you may not need to fill in every section. However, it’s worth reading through each bit to make sure that you’re not missing anything and you have completed everything that’s needed!

I started filling out my tax return directly through the HMRC portal, but actually decided I needed extra help since this was my first time submitting. After doing some research, I signed up to TaxScouts and submitted my tax return through them – I’ll explain a little more about this in the next section.

4. File your tax return

Once you’re sure that all sections of your self assessment tax return form are correct, you can go ahead and submit. You can always save and come back to the form so don’t feel like you need to complete it in one sitting. Take your time to complete this, and don’t rush the submission, it’s definitely worth checking over everything before you click that button!

As I mentioned above, your tax return needs to be submitted by 31st January of the following year. So if you’re filing for the 2022 – 2023 financial year, your tax return would need to be filed by 31st January 2024. You’ll get a ‘Submission Response’ when you’ve sent the form off – make sure that you save this as it’s proof that you’ve submitted.

Completing your self-assessment tax return with TaxScouts

I’d been umming and ahing for ages about whether I should enlist the help of an accountant to submit my tax return, or whether I should save the money and try to complete it myself. Ultimately, I had too many things that I was unsure about and I didn’t feel confident enough to submit it without someone else checking over it first, so I decided to file with TaxScouts.

Before I explain the process, I just want to mention that this post isn’t sponsored by TaxScouts, I just used the site to complete my tax return and wanted to share my experience in case it’s useful to anyone else!

So, what is TaxScouts? TaxScouts is an HMRC-recognised online service that helps people submit their tax returns with more certainty and less stress. They offer three main services:

• Tax return submissions – £149
• One-off tax advice – £119
• Pay-as-you-go tax accountant – £229

I chose the tax return service as that was all that I needed at the time. If you’d prefer to have a face-to-face call with an accountant though, you can choose one of the other packages (depending on how much tax advice you think you’ll need).

How does the TaxScouts tax return service work?

CHOOSE YOUR INCOME SOURCES

Before you actually pay for anything, you have to answer a few quick questions, including how you’ve earned income during the tax year. This might be the salary from your job, money earned from self-employment (blogging and other forms of content creation usually fall under this category), interest or other income sources like property rentals.

ANSWER A FEW BASIC QUESTIONS

TaxScouts can pull your employment information from HMRC so you usually won’t need to provide documentation for the ‘Employment’ section. As a content creator, the ‘Self-Employment’ section will likely be your main focus. Here, it’ll ask you to provide an estimate of how much self-employed income you earned and how much your expenses came to. You’ll also need to write a brief summary of the work you do for self-employment.

Once you’ve filled out these questions, you’ll be matched with an accountant. This is the point at which you pay, and don’t worry if you need to change any of your previous responses, these can still be amended as you work through the other sections.

PROVIDE SUPPORTING DOCUMENTS

After you’ve paid, you’ll need to provide your accountant with the necessary documentation to support your tax return. You can either upload all receipts/invoices as separate files, or you can use a spreadsheet which summarises your income and expenses throughout the financial year. TaxScouts has their own spreadsheet template which makes it really easy to upload it this way.

When you’ve uploaded your documents (and checked over them a few times!), you can then ask your accountant to start working on your tax return. If you have any questions for the accountant (or vice versa), you can message them through the TaxScouts site. The only thing you won’t be able to do with the basic Tax Return service is have a face-to-face call.

REVIEW AND FILE YOUR TAX RETURN

You’ll receive an email as soon as your accountant has finished working on your tax return. If you log into the TaxScouts site, you’ll see that you should have a copy of the tax return as well as the tax calculations used by the accountant. Check over the return and the calculations, and if you’re happy with them, you can then ask your accountant to file the return with HMRC.

When everything’s submitted, you’ll receive an HMRC filing receipt. Make sure you keep this somewhere safe. At this point, your tax return is done!

NB: It may take a few days to appear on the HMRC portal, so don’t stress if it doesn’t appear instantly.

TaxScouts review: my experience with the service

I really wasn’t sure whether this would be worth spending the money on, but ultimately it’s saved me so much time. I was actually stunned by how quickly my return was completed, I’d read online that it usually takes around 48 hours but can sometimes take longer. I literally submitted it in the morning and by 8pm that evening the accountant had sent it back to me to review!

Of course, the process is not completely effortless, you still need to spend some time compiling receipts / invoices and looking back at what you’ve spent throughout the year. But it does make the ‘paperwork’ side of things a lot easier. I found the HMRC tax return form really hard to navigate and I wasn’t sure which information I needed to input where. TaxScouts did all of that for me which meant I didn’t have to worry about making mistakes.

The platform is so easy to use and the accountant I was paired with was super responsive. In fact, the whole return-filing experience was just really straightforward.

At £149 this definitely isn’t cheap, but for me it was worth it because it took so much of the stress away. If you’re in the process of submitting your tax return and want to give TaxScouts a try, using my referral link will give you 10% off your first TaxScouts service.