Tax Return

Tax Return is the end-of-year submission under UK’s Making Tax Digital (MTD) for Income Tax regime. It brings together all income, expenses, adjustments and reliefs associated with your NINO (National Insurance Number) for a tax year. By submitting it, you confirm to HMRC that all your records are complete and accurate. HMRC then uses this information to calculate the final tax liability or refund for that tax year.

With tax return, you do not add any new information. All the details you had earlier submitted will be fetched into Zoho Books, which you can review, finalise and submit to HMRC.

Prerequisite: Before you proceed to submit the tax return, ensure that you:

Submit all four quarterly updates to HMRC.
Record income from all applicable sources, including business, property, interest and dividend income.

View Tax Estimate and HMRC Assist Suggestions

In Zoho Books, you can use the Tax Estimate feature to check your estimated tax liability before finalising your tax return and the HMRC Assist feature to view suggestions provided by HMRC based on your submitted data to help you identify and correct potential discrepancies in your tax filings.

Tax Estimate

Tax Estimate shows a running estimate of the income tax you owe for the selected tax year, based on the data retrieved from HMRC. The estimate is calculated using the income and expense data submitted to the HMRC.

Zoho Books automatically updates the estimate value after each submission. However, to reflect the updates made in other software it is still essential to recompute manually to ensure that the estimate value remains accurate.

To recompute your tax estimate:

Go to Filing & Compliance on the left sidebar and select Income Tax.
The Your Annual Tax Estimate banner displays the current estimate for the selected tax year.
Click Recompute to reflect the latest values in the estimate. Please note that it may take some time for the updates to appear in Zoho Books.

Click Refresh to check the progress.

Now, the estimate will reflect the most recent values.

To view the estimate for a different tax year, click the Tax Year dropdown and select the relevant year.

HMRC Assist

HMRC Assist in Zoho Books displays issues, warnings, feedback, and suggestions identified by HMRC based on your submitted data. Each suggestion includes a description of the potential issue, guidance on how to resolve it, and links to relevant HMRC resources.

To view HMRC Assist details:

Go to Filing & Compliance on the left sidebar and select Income Tax.
Click HMRC Assist in the Your Annual Tax Estimate banner.

The HMRC Assist panel will open on the right.

Click any suggestion to expand it and view the full details.

Each HMRC Assist suggestion describes a specific issue and tells you what to review or correct. Once you identify the issue, you can amend it in the upcoming quarterly updates or by creating the relevant BSAS, Annual Submission or Other Income Sources forms.

Note:

You can also view the HMRC Assist suggestions within a finalised tax return. Go to Filing & Compliance > Income Tax. Select a finalised tax return under the Tax Return section and click HMRC Assist.

Fetch Tax Return into Zoho Books

To fetch the tax return values, all your quarterly updates and tax return for the tax year must be listed in your Zoho Books organisation.

Here’s how:

Go to Filing & Compliance on the left sidebar and select Income Tax.
Click + Fetch Details From HMRC in the top right corner.

All the quarterly updates and tax return associated with your NINO will be displayed in Zoho Books.

To fetch the latest tax return values from HMRC:

In the To Be Filed tab, select the tax return you want to update. This may take a few minutes to be updated in Zoho Books, during which the status will be Calculation In Progress.
Click Refresh to check the progress.

Once the values are processed, they will be displayed in the Tax Return page.

Finalise Tax Return

Once you fetch the tax return details from HMRC, you can review and finalise them.

Here’s how:

Go to Filing & Compliance on the left sidebar and select Income Tax.
In the Tax Return section, select the tax return you want to finalise.
In the Tax Return page, review the amounts in the respective boxes.
Click Finalise Return.
In the confirmation pop-up, read the terms and click Finalise Update.

The tax return will be marked as Finalised.

Recompute Tax Return

If there are any discrepancies in your tax return, such as a value mismatch between HMRC and Zoho Books, you need to recompute it in Zoho Books, so that they are up to date with the latest values available in the HMRC portal.

To recompute your tax return in the Draft status:

Go to Filing & Compliance on the left sidebar and select Income Tax.
In the Tax Return section, select the tax return you want to recompute.
In the Tax Return page, click Fetch & Recompute in the top right corner.

The values will now be recomputed and updated.

To recompute your tax return in the Finalised status:

Go to Filing & Compliance on the left sidebar and select Income Tax.
In the Tax Return section, select the finalised tax return you want to recompute.
Click the More icon on the top right and select Edit.
In the confirmation pop-up, click Continue to Edit.

Now, the tax return will be changed to Draft status and you can fetch the updated values from HMRC.

In the Tax Return page, click Fetch & Recompute in the top right corner.

The values will be recomputed in Zoho Books to match the updated ones available in HMRC.

Note:

Once the values are recomputed, you must finalise the return again.

Submit Tax Return to HMRC

Once the tax return is finalised, you can submit it to HMRC.

Here’s how:

Go to Filing & Compliance on the left sidebar and select Income Tax.
In the Tax Return section, select the tax return you want to submit to HMRC.
In the Tax Return page, click Send Update in the top right corner.
In the confirmation pop-up, read the terms and click Send Update again.

The tax return will be sent to HMRC, and will be marked as Submitted in Zoho Books.

Note:

You can start submitting your tax return once the respective tax year ends (from April 6th) and the last date to submit your tax return would be January 31st of the following tax year. For example, for the 2026–27 tax year, the tax return must be submitted on or before January 31st, 2028.

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