Most of the big ones can be done without a self assessment. If you make a pension contribution for example, you can call hmrc and tell them and they'll adjust your tax code

Doesn't that more or less equate to doing your taxes, just in little updates for each thing, rather than one big update at the end of the year?

Not at all. The list of things you can claim for is very limited, and the majority of them are automatically applied. Having to actually contact HMRC is a rarity. If you are salaried employee with no extra cash coming in, you don't need to do anything.

Another example of how the system works - if you are working two jobs, both as a regular employee, HRMC will instruct your employer as to what your tax deduction should be for that paycheck to make sure that things are balanced. For <some large number>% of people, this will be correct, and if it's not, it will rectify itself over 2 or 3 pay periods. If that's _still_ not enough, a phone call to HMRC (usually taking less than 10 minuts for the two times in a decade I've had to do it) will resolve the issue in your next check.

You can claim those, if you use the transport as part of your work but notably not for travelling to and from work, 20p per mile for the bike.

Charitable contributions? How are those treated?

If I want to give (say) £100 to a charity, I give £75 and sign something agreeing to allow the charity to get the rest from the income taxes I already paid.

(I forget the exact percentage.)

Those are claimed by the recipient under a programme called Gift Aid.

Do I understand correctly that charities report contributions to the government, which then adjusts the taxes due from the donors? That seems like a good system.

The tax relief goes to the charity itself, rather than the donor. They can claim a top-up of up to 25% of your donation from the government, as long as the total amount claimed by all donation recipients does not exceed the total annual income tax paid by the donor. So if you donate £100 and fill out a declaration saying that you 'Gift Aid' that donation, the charity can claim an additional £25 from the government, as long as you paid at least £25 in income taxes that financial year.

Note that if you're paying in the 40% and/or 45% income tax brackets, the charity doesn't know about that, and still only gets the 25% topup (equivalent to the 20% income tax most people pay).

You can either:

* Gift that remaining amount to HMRC by doing nothing (it will not go to the charity)

* Claim it back (I don't know any other way to do this other than filing a self assessment)

But when you get it back you think - I can give that to charity - thus begining a never-ending loop.

I did not know until now that the other 20% could be reclaimed by the donor as well, if they paid 40% tax.

If the donor donates that amount as well and we loop infinitely, the final amount received by the charity would be exactly 1.5625x the originally-donated amount (assuming that the HMRC allows arbitrary small fractions of a penny to be claimed).

Explanation: if you donate an amount x, the final amount would be the infinite series x + sigma(0.25*0.2^(k-1) + 0.2^k, k=1, k=inf), which is the sum of two separate geometric series, so for each one, we can use the formula a/(1-r), where 'a' is the first term (0.25 for the first series, 0.2 for the second) and 'r' is the ratio between each term (0.2 in both cases).

> The tax relief goes to the charity itself, rather than the donor.

Half goes to the charity, and half to the donor.

Right they can claim 25% but you can also claim another 20% back!