maxb

If you need the loss relief whilst the company is *in liquidation*, then you'd need to do a negligible value claim, and deal with the evidentiary requirements for that. (Or perhaps, the wording at https://www.gov.uk/hmrc-internal-manuals/capital-gains-manual/cg13145 might imply that in some cases HMRC might be prepared to accept less evidence in some cases, but I have been unable to find a clear statement on that point.) But, if you can afford to wait for the loss relief until the liquidation finishes and the company is dissolved, that complexity goes away, and you are just reporting a concrete loss that has occurred - referring again to HS286 at https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/negligible-value-claims-and-income-tax-losses-on-disposals-of-shares-you-have-subscribed-for-in-qualifying-trading-companies-hs286-self-assessment-he/hs286-negligible-value-claims-and-income-tax-losses-on-disposals-of-shares-you-have-subscribed-for-in-qualifying-trading-companies-2024 : "(share loss relief) — the disposal may be as a result of making a negligible value claim, but the relief is available for other types of disposal" providing a clear statement that share loss relief doesn't necessarily require a negligible value claim, if another allowed type of disposal (such as dissolution of the company) crystallises the loss instead.

The tax return guide a.k.a. SA150 Notes also explicitly describes the 51/1 method in the notes for the relevant box. It too mentions the variation for pensions started before 6 April 2010. It also specifically says NOT to calculate based on 4-weekly payments received, so HMRC Admin 21 is contradicting the official published notes. @Clive Smaldon: I agree that the amounts are small and the method feels unnecessarily overcomplicated, but since HMRC explicitly lays out the method it wants to be followed, we can only reasonably comply.

@ConfusedTaxpayer27 No, you don't have to still hold the shares at the time of filing the return to benefit from share loss relief. Source: HS286 "The loss must have been made on a disposal by way of one of the following: ... the dissolution of the company ...". Therefore shares held until the company is dissolved do count as a qualifying disposal. Furthermore, it makes things simpler if the company has actually been dissolved, as then you can simply claim for the actual loss - whereas if liquidation is ongoing, you have to make a Negligible Value Claim with appropriate evidence - https://www.gov.uk/guidance/negligible-value-agreements#negligible-value-claims-for-company-shares-and-securities which may not be trivial to collect.

AFAIK, pay in lieu of notice is treated equivalently to normal pay. Once you salary sacrifice it, it should be equivalent to any other pay you salary sacrifice. Does it count as earnings? That depends on the context. It wouldn't count as directly taxable (that being the point of the salary sacrifice), but it would count in the calculations for a high earner's tapered pension Annual Allowance.

I am guessing that when you say that Self Assessment takes the default tax code of 1257L, you mean it says your Personal Allowance is £12570 - and that is probably correct. As far as I know, there is only one reason a Personal Allowance can be more than that, according to https://www.gov.uk/income-tax-rates. Having a tax code of 1632L does *not* mean you have a Personal Allowance of £16320 - it means that HMRC estimate that when all of the allowances and deductions that are being managed through your tax code are added up, that's what they will come to. Your next step should be to look at the Notice of Coding that told you your tax code (which can also be found in your online tax account), and see what elements other than the Personal Allowance were included in it. You can then check to see if all those elements are also included in your tax return. An allowance included in your code, but not claimed in the return, would explain what you describe. It can be helpful to think of it like this: your tax code is an estimate to get your tax affairs approximately right over the course of the year. Then, at the end of the year, Self Assessment looks back over everything, ignoring the estimate, and recalculating a final value from scratch. (It does get more complicated if your tax code is also being used to collect underpaid tax from previous tax years - but apart from that special case, tax codes have no bearing on the Self Assessment calculation at all!)

@ConfusedTaxpayer27 I'm confused why you're talking about the various end-of-form additional information boxes (SA108 box 54 and SA100 box 19)... I think Admin 20's three paragraphs simply: 1) Confirmed SA108 and the section containing the boxes we were previously talking about 2) Gave instructions on how to get to that same section when filing online, rather than using paper forms 3) Somewhat confusingly, then also brought up the box for EIS Income Tax relief on subscriptions, not losses. You've then introduced the additional complication of claiming against previous years... for which my reading of the situation means that you wouldn't be using boxes 41/42 at all, since they look specific to same-year claims to me, with box 43/44 being provided for carrying back to the previous year - and then you'd be completing SA108 in your 2024/25 return, not in your 2023/24 return.

If you are filing online (presumably the case at this time of the year), it tells you about payments on account, if any, as part of showing you your calculation immediately prior to submission.

I've never been in quite this situation myself, but I have a feeling the requested payments on account are mostly just based on the total you are needing to pay this year. However, a claim to reduce payments on account is a routine process, and it's linked towards the bottom of the right hand menu in the Self Assessment site after you are done with a return - and also mentioned at https://www.gov.uk/guidance/claim-to-reduce-payments-on-account I think you'll need to submit your return, and then submit one of those claims too.

If I understand correctly, the deciding point is who was listed as the life or lives insured on the bonds. If it was your mother (solely, or as last remaining life insured), the bonds end, and the gain is treated as part of her final personal taxation, and top slicing is available. If at least one life insured remains living, the bonds continue into the estate as bonds, and if a personal representative was to then need to trigger their surrender for value (e.g. to realise cash to pay bequests), they would be subject to tax with no top slicing permitted. Or at least, that's what I think I've gleaned from trying to understand my own family's affairs!

I think that is normal. In my experience, the balancing payment on the tax calculation at the end of filling in the return, takes into account the figures reported in the return itself only. I have needed to adjust it myself to take account of a pre-existing balance, when deciding how much to actually pay.