I still remember when, on February 1, as I was yawning and stretching and thinking about coffee, my husband told me (in that mumbling, just-woke-up sort of way) that he’d heard January 31 was the deadline for filing taxes. I just about shot out of bed.
I started to panic. I hadn’t thought about UK taxes. Why would the deadline be so early? I had just started to think about (read: dread) German and US taxes. I thought I had a good year to put off concerns about UK taxes.
That’s when I learned that the UK tax year begins on April 6. That’s right: April 6. Because who wants a calendar year defining their taxes? (In fairness, the date isn’t arbitrary. It’s just linked to really old calendars — ones that consider March 25 the beginning of the legal year — and the switch to the Gregorian calendar in 1752.)
Once my brain kicked in (it really doesn’t until after my first cup of coffee, most of the time) I relaxed. We were still in the middle of our first tax year as UK residents. We didn’t have to worry about filing taxes for another full year. Thank goodness. I didn’t think I could handle tax stress for three different countries at once.
So here we are on April 6. Happy new year. 😉
Expat Linguist 
Oh so you don’t need to do a tax return until after a full year of working in the UK? We still have to do it in Australia! But I’m so glad we never had to do it in Germany. Goodness I don’t even want to imagine what the forms would be like there!
Well, the return that was due January 31 this year was for the April 6, 2012 – April 5, 2013 tax year. Since we just moved to the UK, we didn’t live or work here during that period. We’ll need to file a return for the tax year that just ended in the UK, but that’s not due until next January.
I still have finish my tax returns for the US and Germany, though. That’s plenty to make me crazy. 😉