Anxiety About Taxes: How to Reduce Tax Stress
Every year nearly a quarter of UK individual taxpayers fail to get their tax returns or payments in by the January 31st deadline. Most of the time it is not a case of wilful disregard for tax laws. It's usually more a matter of being unclear about changes to certain laws, or simply not having enough money to make a tax payment by the due date. These and other issues can create enormous amounts of stress in a person's life. And make no mistake, tax stress is a very real psychological issue. In this post, the pros at Pie take a look at anxiety related to taxes and how you can reduce your tax stress.
Dealing with Tax Anxiety and Tax Stress
Constantly worrying about filing and paying taxes on time can and often does lead to increased stress levels, lost sleep, poor performance at work and a general sense of unease and unhappiness.
In this post, we'll look at ways you can reduce the stress created by tax deadlines and then we'll look at practical ways you can ensure your taxes get filed and paid on time.
5 Tips on How to Deal With Tax Stress
Tip 1: Acknowledge the Stress
The first step in resolving a problem is acknowledging its existence. That goes for just about everything, including tax stress. Instead of trying to maintain a stiff upper lip, acknowledge that you are stressed out and that you’re feeling overwhelmed. Oftentimes, simply dragging an issue out into the light in this way can reduce its impact.
Tip 2: Don’t Procrastinate
People who are feeling stressed out at tax time often freeze like a deer in the headlights. Their response to the stress is to simply kick the can down the road and hope it goes away. But all that does is make a bad situation worse. Don’t procrastinate. Talk to a tax pro and get involved in the solution. Stepping forward early is vital because understanding what really happens when you put off dealing with tax reveals that avoidance only triggers automatic penalties and deeper financial stress that could have easily been mitigated.
Tip 3: Stay Positive
There are two ways we can approach any issue. We can focus on the potential downside and indulge in fear and self-pity while stressing ourselves out, or we can stay positive and pro-active and look for solutions. Remember, every problem has a solution. You just have to find it. We can focus on the potential downside and indulge in fear, or we can look for solutions. For further context on how this works in practice, explore tax efficient angel investing. Proactive individuals can also lower their annual liabilities by claiming tax relief on professional memberships to recover costs for mandatory fees that are required to maintain their industry standing.
Tip 4: Don’t Do Things that Will Make Your Situation Worse
If you think you might have a hard time making your tax payment on January 31st, hold off on the expensive purchases and nights on the town until you've paid the debt. Often a bit of fiscal restraint is all that's necessary to meet a tax obligation. To better understand the underlying mechanisms, take a look at challenges in the property development sector. This complexity increases significantly if you hold assets abroad, where understanding the statutory remittance basis tax rules helps residents declare their overseas income accurately to avoid future compliance issues.
Tip 5: Talk About it
There are support groups all over the UK where people meet and share situations that are stressing them out. Anxiety UK, for instance, operate scores of in-person and online support groups that offer a safe place for adults to share their experiences and coping strategies. Do yourself a favour and take advantage of them.
Practical Ways to Ensure You Meet Your Tax Obligations
Nearly 3/4 of all freelance workers in the UK say that taxes are the biggest source of stress in their lives. And more than 1/3 say it’s because they just don’t understand the UK tax system. We hear you. That’s why we created the Pie app.
Our goal was to create an effective tool that would simplify your tax calculations, preparation and payment, and the Pie mobile app is just that.
You can continue on as you are, going through annual periods of abject fear, uncertainty and stress. Or you can leave all that behind with the Pie app.
With its intuitive interface, modest learning curve and unparalleled reliability it’s the best way there is to get a productive handle on your relationship with HMRC and relieve yourself of tax anxiety once and for all.
The Pie app provides an array of tools that allow you to achieve that goal, including:
Integrated Invoicing
Create and send digital invoices, track payments, send automatic payment reminders and manage income all from within the app. Our revenue tracking feature allows you to keep a real-time eye on income and expenses so you know exactly where you stand as tax time approaches. When bookkeeping records are left disorganized, it often prevents decisive action, and identifying how uncertainty leads to tax inaction explains why complex financial procedures frequently cause sole traders to delay their core submissions.
