Why today is the best day to pay your self assessment tax bill
Everyone has the 31st January ingrained in their mind as the deadline to pay their self assessment deadline. But today is actually the best day to pay it, here’s why.
Every year I see the same messages from clients – “I paid my tax on the 31st, why do HMRC say it is late?”.
The issue isn’t whether you paid it is WHEN you paid. The golden rule is that it is about cleared funds. HMRC count your tax bill as paid when it clears their account and not when it leaves yours.
Therefore leaving 2 days for funds to clear and 1 more day for HMRC to allocate it to your account, with one more day shaved off due to the 31st being a Saturday basically means that the optimum time to pay is today.