Sold UK property? Work out your filing deadline

What the 60 days actually run from

The clock starts on the date of completion — not exchange, not the date the money reaches your account, and not the date your solicitor gets round to telling you. Within 60 days of that date a non-resident has to file a UK Capital Gains Tax on UK property return and pay any tax due.

The duty to report is separate from the duty to pay. You must file even where there is no tax at all: a loss, a gain wiped out by rebasing, a transfer between spouses at no gain and no loss. People who correctly work out that they owe nothing, and therefore file nothing, are the single most common group we have to rescue.

It is also independent of Self Assessment. If you file a return in January, the same disposal goes on that as well. Filing one does not discharge the other.

Why almost nobody hears about it in time

Conveyancing solicitors are not required to tell you, and most do not. Estate agents have no reason to. HMRC does not write to you, because until you file it does not know the sale happened. The first many people hear of the rule is a penalty notice forwarded from an old UK address, or a conversation with an accountant months later.

If you are reading this before completion, the useful thing to know is that the computation is much easier to do now than later. Get the April 2015 value evidenced while the estate agent who sold it still has comparables, keep the completion statement, and the return itself is a short job.

The penalties, in order

These are HMRC's published late-filing penalties for this return:

• £100 the day after the deadline, whatever the tax position.
• £10 a day, for up to 90 days, once the return is three months late.
• At six months, a further £300 or 5% of the tax due, whichever is higher.
• At twelve months, a second £300 or 5%, on the same basis.
• Interest, and separate late-payment penalties, on any tax not paid.

A reasonable excuse can remove them, provided you file without further delay once the excuse ends. "I did not know" is not, on its own, a reasonable excuse — but the surrounding circumstances sometimes are, and the case is much stronger made voluntarily than after HMRC has opened an enquiry.

What we would do next

Whether you are inside the window or well past it, the routine is the same: establish the completion date and the ownership history, compute the gain all three permitted ways, file, pay, and where relevant put a reasonable-excuse case in writing. Our fee for the whole thing is £449, including the rebasing comparison that usually saves several times that.