I lost my house after HMRC sent me a surprise tax bill. This is the mistake lots of women are making – and it cost me everything…

Oh, August. If you are jumping to the pool, laziness on the beach, look on the horizon and if you are a professional profession-you will probably put interventional thoughts about not paying your July tax bill behind your mind.

The cost of life enters the crisis and the middle -class families are in the Sun, even one day in the park for a day to meet their usual weeks, it becomes even more painful to deliver your hardly earned money with the dead ended deadline.

The deadline for application is only five days to pay for 5 percent of the invoice before it was finished.

And this is over 100 pounds because it is late in the first place. But as the author Douglas Adams said: ‘I love the deadline. I love the suffocating sound they make as it passes. ‘

This year, when you have school holidays and mortgage, bills and weekly grocery store for a fork for a fork for a fork, quietly, they just like to ‘rolled’ or admit that they have not put aside enough to cover it seems to have more self -employed friends.

Some just went on a vacation on the credit card, threw it and decided to worry about the tax bill when they returned.

Others are trying to withstand their money until the last possible minute. They can’t just be. At the end of January, more than a million people missed the first date.

According to Flic, the endless letters from the tax man were a distant storm that he could ignore until he left for too long – and he began his debt to HMRC for almost twice the original total.

All of the above can be understandable – but let me tell you, but also very stupid.

Trust to me, from bitter personal experiences, delay does not work on the taxis, the tactics are working on a poem hungry tiger than reading poetry. Basically, it comes for you in both ways.

I learned this lesson in the most painful way that could come to mind when it was in the early 30s.

At that time, I had a small son, a small son, three step -childs, an enormous Victorian House (with the matching enormous mortgage) and a few credit cards to host a few credit cards.

Blairism’s height and always seemed enough money to pay for holidays, food and good clothes.

I was gaining much more than I expected, and I was cruelly working, a series of books, columns, TV views and stressful newspaper contracts such as Mancunian Carrie Bradshaw.

I was fine in my job – and with money scary. I was also very busy to stop with a pile of financial demand, so the manager collapsed in a higher way, unopened brown envelopes were pushed behind the drawer, and the awareness that the debt was pushed behind my mind.

I would be released from the moment I left university and I didn’t learn about money skills. My family was too much ‘straw when the sun was shining’ and it was always passed, so I assume that I would do it somehow.

In my opinion, the endless letters from HMRC, the sun was still shining, was a further storm, and we could have a trip to Mayorka. Until I left for too long – and when I finally opened the letters I avoided, the clouds were broken.

Since I did not pay my tax invoice on time, I discovered that I was placed in a system that collects an increasing percentage of the amount of debtor for every day he was paid.

Months had passed, and now I owe it to HMRC for almost twice the original total. I didn’t have money – our great Spanish holiday for a busy summer and six meant that my credit cards were maximum and I had no idea what to do.

The only answer was to sell our house. It was a half -bed room on a good street in the Southern Manchester suburbs, and in the five years we had, he accrued about 100,000 £ self. (It was those days.)

The HMRC figures obtained from this year reveal that approximately 1.1 million people missed the deadline for a tax return application and provided interest rate hikes due to a penalty and payment of £ 100.

There was no other way to find more than £ 30,000 in a short time, and the alternative was to go bankrupt-not a bankrupt, but it meant deep, old-fashioned shame I felt the chance to get mortgages, credit cards or credit for at least six years.

The house was sold a few months later and we moved home a little smaller but still a good road, allowed children to stay in their schools and paid the tax bill.

But he was a short and sharp one on his way to the lessons. I never promised that I would not be in a situation where I was financially weak because of my own stupidity and avoidance.

In addition to hiding the letters that scared me, I had to live with a sense of guilt, knowing that I had a lot of turmoil in the lives of children, forcing them to a movement they probably did not do.

Knowing that a disaster is prevented is always worse. Fortunately, then we had a way out. If it were now, I wouldn’t be so lucky.

But now, while presenting my refunds on time and paying as soon as the invoice arrived, others were not scolded much. The HMRC figures obtained from this year reveal that approximately 1.1 million people missed the deadline for a tax return application and provided interest rate hikes due to a penalty and payment of £ 100.

And I doubt that it is just laziness or not wandering around. For many, tax forms cause a real horror not only in complexity but also to fill it.

Financial coach and rented certified accountant Tanya Ibbersson says: ‘In recent years, I have noticed a definite tendency of people who made tax returns and this year will not be different.’

IBBERSERSON believes that the tendency is directed by a mixture of ‘financial depression, economic uncertainty, and in most cases the prevention of the mentality around the money’.

“Without a real recovery of the cost of life and the Covid Times, many people I worked closely, especially women with self -employed women, were burned,” he continues. ‘Even if they know that there may be penalties, they postpone it to the important business manager.’

At the same time, it seems to tighten the HMRC grain. ‘In April 2026, the tax -digital requirements approaching the taxpayers for self -employed taxpayers [which will require the self-employed to keep digital records and send quarterly updates]They clearly increase expectations and execution, ” Ibbersson warns.

Which one? Recently, the survey has found that the self-evaluation tax refunds lasted 19 million hours-about two and a half hours for each individual

‘I probably suspect that they are trying to increase compatibility by using the bar instead of carrots to reduce chaos.’

Which one? Recently, the questionnaire, self-assessment tax refunds lasted for 19 million hours for the completion of the British-it took about two and a half hours for an individual.

It should not be surprising that many people will be late. My own fear of money, even though I spend more spending, has been greatly alleviated by employing an accountant for many years – the relief of knowing that I haven’t scattered outweighs it much more outweigher than spending.

But I have many friends who do their own accounts and live with fear of judicial mathematics.

Of course, we should put aside money to pay the final bill – we all know that this is not really our ‘money’ – but when the cost of life is limited in a obscene way and what we spend for a year by the sea for a week, perhaps few of us are not surprise.

Nevertheless, I learned that postponement can lead to disaster. And I hate the anxious delay of others to be a much more destructive experience in losing your home.