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19/10/2026

Few things are harder to sit with than penalty notices arriving for a tax return you do not believe you need to file.

The charges mount while you wait. Daily penalties, then further late filing penalties on top. The number on the notice grows every time you look at it, and it is difficult not to react.

Here is what we tell clients in that position. Hold your nerve.

If the filing requirement should not have been there, cancelling it removes the penalties along with it. They fall away together. The notices arriving in the meantime feel alarming, but they are not the final position.

That does not make the wait pleasant, particularly now the process takes considerably longer than it used to. But it does change how you read the letters while it happens.

If notices are arriving for a return you do not think you owe, the sooner someone looks at it the better.

Laura explains in this clip from the latest episode of the Tax Compass Podcast.

Listen on YouTube, Spotify, Apple, or wherever you get your podcasts. Link in comments.

LSR Partners help you pay the right tax in the right place at the right time.

17/10/2026

If you have left the UK and still receive self assessment penalty notices, this one is for you.

Plenty of people in that position do not need to file at all. No UK income, non-resident, nothing to report. Historically the fix was straightforward. We rang HMRC, asked for the filing requirement to be cancelled, and it was done.

One week we had several cancelled on the phone without difficulty. The following week, the answer was that HMRC no longer do that. It now has to be done in writing, and that can take around six months.

Consider who this affects. Almost everyone needing a filing requirement cancelled is already in the penalty regime. They are watching charges accumulate while a letter sits in a queue.

The penalties do fall away once the requirement is cancelled. But being told to sit tight for six months while the number climbs is not a comfortable place to be.

If you are getting notices for a return you do not believe you need to file, deal with it sooner rather than later. The process is slower than it was.

Simon and Laura cover this in the latest episode of the Tax Compass Podcast.

Listen on YouTube, Spotify, Apple, or wherever you get your podcasts. Link in comments.

LSR Partners help you pay the right tax in the right place at the right time.

15/10/2026

A box on the tax return asks you to enter refunds received from HMRC during the year.

The detailed notes then tell you not to, for certain types of refund.

The instruction beside the box and the guidance behind it say opposite things. Follow the wrong one and the consequences are real. Several of our clients hit this, and one ended up being chased by debt collection for money she did not owe.

Sorting it out should have been simple. It was not, and that is a story for the full episode.

The wider point is worth making, though. Most self assessment errors are not carelessness. They are people following instructions that contradict themselves, or guidance buried where nobody thinks to look.

Simon and Laura talk through what dealing with HMRC actually involves in the latest episode of the Tax Compass Podcast.

Listen on YouTube, Spotify, Apple, or wherever you get your podcasts. Link in comments.

LSR Partners help you pay the right tax in the right place at the right time.

13/10/2026

HMRC publish a tool that tells you when to expect a reply. You enter the date you wrote to them, and it returns a date.

We checked recently on an overpayment relief claim. The answer was 14 months.

The tool then advises you not to call before then.

There is no good way to relay that to a client. They ask whether you have misread it. You have not.

What makes it harder is that the wait is rarely the end of it. We have had claims sit unacknowledged for nine months, by which point a separate deadline had passed and we were arguing special circumstances to preserve a position that should never have been at risk.

You wait because HMRC have not reached their own deadline. Then a different deadline expires while you are waiting.

Simon and Laura talk through what dealing with HMRC actually involves in the latest episode of the Tax Compass Podcast.

Listen on YouTube, Spotify, Apple, or wherever you get your podcasts. Link in comments.

LSR Partners help you pay the right tax in the right place at the right time.

11/10/2026

There is a sentence we find ourselves using far too often.

"I know you are going to struggle to believe this, but..."

Clients respond the same way every time. That cannot be true. And the honest answer is that it really can be.

We are not talking about aggressive investigations or anything sinister. Mostly it is the ordinary stuff. A correction made one day and refused the next. A response time measured in months. A rule that changed without notice between one week's phone calls and the next.

None of it is dramatic on its own. Together it explains why matters that should take one conversation sometimes take three quarters of a year.

We have opened the file on this in the latest episode of the Tax Compass Podcast. Not as a complaint, but so clients understand where the time goes, and so anyone worrying about a letter from HMRC knows that most of what arrives is administrative rather than anything to fear.

Listen on YouTube, Spotify, Apple, or wherever you get your podcasts. Link in comments.

LSR Partners help you pay the right tax in the right place at the right time.

09/10/2026

Both sides agreed the problem could be solved. One side refused to solve it.

A client was being chased by debt collection for money she did not owe. The day before, an HMRC agent had corrected an identical case in minutes. The next agent said no, and when told a colleague had already fixed the same issue, replied that the colleague should not have done so.

A supervisor later confirmed it. The person who solved the problem had gone against protocol.

Look at what that decision costs. HMRC continue pursuing someone for money she does not owe, which consumes their own staff time. The client carries the stress of letters from debt collection, which is never pleasant. And an overpayment relief claim now has to be prepared, submitted and reviewed, taking months, purely to arrive back where one phone call had already got us.

Nobody benefits. Not the client, not us, not HMRC.

This is the part clients find hardest to accept, and it is why some matters take far longer than they should. Simon and Laura talk it through in the latest episode of the Tax Compass Podcast.

Listen on YouTube, Spotify, Apple, or wherever you get your podcasts. Link in comments.

LSR Partners help you pay the right tax in the right place at the right time.

Clients regularly tell us they cannot believe what we describe. So in the latest episode of the Tax Compass Podcast, we ...
08/10/2026

Clients regularly tell us they cannot believe what we describe. So in the latest episode of the Tax Compass Podcast, we opened the file.

One client was being chased by debt collection for money she did not owe. Simon rang HMRC and reached someone helpful, who agreed the guidance was misleading and fixed it on the spot. Under ten minutes.

The next day, an identical case. Different person, flat refusal. Told a colleague had resolved the same issue the day before, the reply was that the colleague should not have done so. A supervisor confirmed it.

We share this for two reasons.

First, it explains why some matters take months, and why the fees for unpicking them can feel disproportionate to the problem. We find that as frustrating as clients do.

Second, and more usefully: if something arrives from HMRC that looks alarming, it usually is not. One client feared they would break his door down. In reality most of what goes wrong is administrative confusion rather than suspicion of anyone.

Plenty of HMRC staff are helpful and knowledgeable, and a good conversation resolves in minutes what letters take months to achieve. That is genuinely the frustration. Not that nobody helps, but that you cannot rely on it.

Listen on YouTube, Spotify, Apple, or wherever you get your podcasts. Link in comments.

LSR Partners help you pay the right tax in the right place at the right time.

07/10/2026

The whole subject, in one sentence.

A UK pension is taxable in the UK. Changing that is harder than most people expect. Treaty relief exists, but claiming it generally means paying tax wherever you have moved to instead.

Some countries do allow a pension to be moved out of the UK in a tax efficient way. That route is rarely straightforward, and it deserves more room than a short video can give it.

So the useful question is never how to avoid tax on a UK pension. It is which country will tax it, and what that will cost you.

Worth answering before you start drawing rather than afterwards.

Simon sums it up in this clip from our latest video. Link in comments.

LSR Partners help you pay the right tax in the right place at the right time.

05/10/2026

There is only one thing that can move UK pension income out of UK taxation, and that is a double tax treaty.

Where the UK holds a treaty with your country of residence, the pensions article decides which country gets the taxing rights. Some treaties allocate them to the country where you live rather than the country the pension came from. Where that applies, you can claim relief in the UK.

Here is the condition most people miss.

Relief generally depends on you actually paying tax on that pension in the other country. A treaty prevents double taxation. It does not create tax-free income.

That distinction matters when people compare destinations. The question is not whether you escape tax. It is which country collects it, and at what rate.

Laura explains in this clip from our latest video. Link in comments.

LSR Partners help you pay the right tax in the right place at the right time.

03/10/2026

You stop earning a salary. Your pension starts. In your head, one simply replaces the other.

From a tax perspective, they are not interchangeable at all.

The logic becomes clearer if you look at how the money went in. Contributions to a UK pension attract UK tax relief. The government supported you while you built the pot, and they fully intend to tax it coming out.

Which brings us to the rule that catches people out. If you hold a UK pension, that income is taxable in the UK. Full stop. Regardless of where in the world you live.

Plenty of people assume that leaving the UK takes their pension out of HMRC's reach. It generally does not.

Simon and Laura explain in our latest video. Link in comments.

LSR Partners help you pay the right tax in the right place at the right time.

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