Claire Nelson

I'm a writer and author, and for self assessment year 20/21, my (former) accountant introduced me to averaging my income over 2020 and 2021 – in 2020 I had very little income and therefore very little tax to pay, but in 2021 income was much higher, so the averaging helped. I now have a new accountant, who tells me that the averaging on my income means "this needs to be brought in into the current year profits and hence increases the current year tax charge" and that "it has just moved around the same amount of tax between years". That's now how averaging is supposed to work is it? HMRC are closed for the bank holiday at the moment so would love to hear some insight from anyone who's in the know about this.