Received an HMRC Letter About Platform Income? A Driver’s Checklist

A letter from HMRC about income from Uber or another app usually asks you to check your returns, not to pay a set amount. HMRC now receives yearly reports from digital platforms and can compare them with what drivers have declared. A difference can have an ordinary explanation, such as fees, timing or a different tax year, so build your own evidence before you reply.

This checklist covers preparing that reply for UK sole-trader drivers who file Self Assessment. Most of the work is the same exercise as reconciling Uber income, fees, tips and bank payouts week by week, applied to the tax years the letter names.

Checking the Letter Is Genuine

Fraudsters copy HMRC correspondence, so confirm the contact before acting on it. HMRC’s scam checklist says a contact could be a scam if it rushes you, threatens you, asks for bank details or offers a refund. HMRC uses QR codes in some letters, but says they will never take you to a page where you have to enter personal information.

Compare the letter with HMRC’s list of genuine contacts, which HMRC says does not include every communication, and look for matching correspondence in your HMRC online account. Sign in through GOV.UK rather than through a link or phone number you are unsure about.

What the Letter Asks You to Check

Write down the tax years named, the reference, the date of the letter and the date by which HMRC wants a reply. Then note exactly what it asks you to do: check your returns, amend them, explain why they are correct or send information. Each of those needs a different reply, and the date in the letter matters more than any general deadline.

Letters sent to Uber and other app-based drivers in early 2026 asked them to check that all platform income for 2022 to 2023 and 2023 to 2024 had been declared, according to Taxi-Point’s report of the letter. The wording it quoted told drivers to include all income, including fees retained by Uber, and said no action was needed where income had already been declared correctly. Your own letter may cover different years or ask for something else, so work from its text.

What Uber and Other Platforms Report

Under rules that started on 1 January 2024, platform operators collect details from sellers, including people who drive a taxi, and report them to HMRC each year by the following January. HMRC’s digital platform guidance says an individual’s details include their name, home address, date of birth and National Insurance number. The exemption for fewer than 30 sales and under €2,000 is written for sales of goods, so do not assume a small number of trips keeps you out of the report.

The platform must give you a copy of what it reported. HMRC says the copy shows the total you earned in the calendar year less any fees, commission or taxes the platform deducted, split into calendar quarters. HMRC also says a report does not automatically mean you owe tax, and that it does not replace your normal business records.

Because the report runs from January to December and the tax year from 6 April to 5 April, its first quarter belongs to the earlier tax year. The Low Incomes Tax Reform Group’s guide to seller information statements adds that platforms count tips as income and may date a payment differently from your bank.

Reasons the Figures May Not Match

• Gross and net amounts: the platform figure is after fees, while your return may show fares before fees with the fees claimed as an expense. Whether Uber acts as principal or agent on your trips affects which figure is your turnover.
• Calendar year and tax year: January to March in a platform report sits in the previous tax year.
• Tips, bonuses and adjustments: platforms count tips as income, and records built only from bank payouts can miss them.
• Timing: a payout that arrives in April for March trips can fall either side of the year end, depending on the date you use. Use one approach consistently.
• Accounts you forgot: an old driver account, Uber Eats work or a second app can appear in a report you did not expect.
• Genuine omissions: income that never reached your records, such as a whole platform left out of a return.

Letter Response Preparation Checklist

• Keep the original letter. Record the date it arrived, the reference, the tax years named and the reply-by date.
• Confirm the letter is genuine through HMRC’s list of contacts or your online account before sharing any details.
• Download the annual and weekly statements for each platform and each year named, plus each platform’s copy of what it reported to HMRC.
• Find the submitted returns and tax calculations for those years, together with the records listed in the Uber driver Self Assessment document checklist.
• Rebuild each tax year from 6 April to 5 April, platform by platform, and write down which statement lines make up turnover.
• Enter every difference in a discrepancy log with its cause, the evidence and its effect on profit.
• Decide with your accountant whether each year is correct, needs an amendment or needs a disclosure.
• Reply by the date in the letter. If you need more time, contact HMRC before that date and note who you spoke to and when.

Sample Discrepancy Log

Use one row per difference and keep the rows even after a question is answered. The example below is fictional and illustrates the method only; it does not describe a real driver or a real HMRC letter.

In this example the fees row changes the turnover but not the profit, because the same amount is added as income and as an expense. A higher turnover can still matter for the VAT registration tests, so check that history too. The tips row is a real omission that increases profit. Whether any extra tax is due depends on the whole return, so agree the totals before you reply.

Confirm, Amend or Disclose

If your figures were right, reply in the way the letter asks and explain the difference briefly, for example that the report starts in January or that fees appear as an expense. LITRG suggests confirming the facts as they are, supported by records that show what you included and excluded.

If a return is wrong and still within the amendment window, it can be changed online. HMRC’s correction guidance allows changes within 12 months of the Self Assessment deadline, so a 2024 to 2025 return can usually be changed until 31 January 2027. After an online change, your statement shows the difference in tax and any interest.

Older years, such as the 2022 to 2023 and 2023 to 2024 years in the early 2026 letters, are outside that window. HMRC’s online disclosure service handles income not declared in previous years. Its guide to making a disclosure gives you 90 days from HMRC’s acknowledgement of your notification to send the disclosure and payment, or to have agreed a payment arrangement. It also says penalties will usually be lower if you tell HMRC yourself.

If you never registered for Self Assessment for your driving, the work starts with registration and a return for each year, and the late registration and filing steps apply alongside the reply.

Professional Help With the Reply

If the letter covers more than one year, or your log shows a difference you cannot explain, our HMRC compliance support can check the letter and your log and agree the reply or correction route with you. Give the tax years and the reply-by date when you ask for a fixed quote, and share the letter once secure document sharing is arranged. Never send your Government Gateway sign-in details.

Official sources checked 22 October 2026. The checklist and discrepancy log are illustrations for UK sole-trader drivers. VAT, partnership and company records follow separate rules.