Tax Admin Is the Life Admin Task Costing You Most. Here's What to Do About It

New research from MoneySuperMarket has confirmed what most of us suspect: putting off admin costs money. The comparison site surveyed 2,000 UK adults for its Life Admin Report, andTaxd co-CEO and co-founder Arjun Kumar was one of the experts consulted on why tax admin, in particular, tends to get shelved.

The numbers

Nearly two in five UK adults say delaying life admin has cost them money - a missed deal, a late fee, or staying on a worse rate longer than they meant to. Almost half of us have at least one unfinished financial task sitting on the to-do list right now.

Why tax admin gets pushed back

As Arjun explained to MoneySuperMarket, tax admin isn't really one big task, it's lots of small ones that pile up. Manual bookkeeping alone can take 2-4 hours a week, and with MTD now live for the self-employed, quarterly reporting sits on top of that.

The bigger cost, though, is the mental load. Confusing rules mean people spend longer worrying about tax than it would take to actually do it, and that hesitation is costly: miss the Self Assessment deadline and there's an automatic £100 fine, then daily penalties and interest. File in a panic instead, and the usual result is overpaying, because expenses weren't tracked properly.

Done little and often, tax admin becomes routine rather than dreaded, which is exactly what Taxd is built for.

Three quick fixes

1. Use MTD's quarterly reporting as intended: Spread the load instead of treating each deadline as its own crisis.
2. Track expenses as you go: Not from memory months later.
3. Automate the bookkeeping so it's not something you have to remember to do.

MoneySuperMarket is marking the findings with the Life Admin Day on Tuesday 18 August. Arjun will be speaking at their London event, taking place from 7pm to 8:30pm. 

If tax admin is the task you've been putting off, it's a good prompt to finally deal with it.

See the full MoneySuperMarket Life Admin Report here