A personal tax return is a form that you as a taxpayer sometimes have to submit to HMRC to declare your income and how much tax you should pay (or sometimes get back from HMRC as a tax refund).

When you need to file a personal tax return:

• if you’re employed and earned over £100,000 per year
• if you earned over £1,000 from self-employment
• if you made over £2,500 from renting out a property
• and other reasons – here is a complete list of who needs to file a tax return.

If you need to file one, you need to do it before January 31st of the year following the tax year in which you earned that income. The UK tax year goes from April 6th to April 5th. For example, if you were self-employed between April 6th 2018 to April 5th 2019, you have until January 31st 2020 to file a tax return.

You can file a tax return in several ways:

• you can send a paper tax return to HMRC
• or you can go to HMRC’s website and submit one online yourself
• or you can have an accountant or tax return service like TaxScouts do it for you.