Keep being taxed incorrectly for someone's company car

skintmacflint · 21 September 2012 at 1:58AM

Hope this is correct place for my query.

For past 3 years keep receiving a tax code notice to say I've underpaid tax as they haven't allowed for tax I should be paying on a car.

Now I don't have company car or any car. I'm retired on pension and private pension . DVLC medically revoked my driving licence 4 years. Appreciate the Tax office won't know this!!.

On phoning Tax Office the first time they said it was a mistake and explained it happened as a firm in London (which I've never heard of ) have filled in paperwork which put a company car benefit against my national insurance number. The Tax Office don't cross check the information they get is correct.

Only problem is last time once they corrected it, they then accidentally removed the declared government pension from my income which then triggered a tax rebate over a £1000 I shouldn't have had.

So had to contact them again, wait to receive a repayment form , then send it back with full payment . They said as it was their mistake I could take the option of repaying it through my tax code but on a fixed income prefer to know where I am .

Even so it still wasn't enough to send back the full amount.Can't understand much to do with Tax but it was something about end of year estimates. So still ended up with a slightly higher code until they had all their year end or whatever info from both DWP and pension provider and revised it . But for someone on a fixed income it does make a differnece.

Thinking this would be fixed after 2 previous occurrences , letter from Tax Office today once again stating I've underpaid tax for a car benefit of just under £3000, so now owe then tax yet again.

Is there any way to stop this 'mythical car' landing against my national insurance number each year. Or is this just a small annual inconvenience Im going to have to put up until whatever firm or employee it is , get the info they send to the Tax office correct.?

CKhalvashi · 21 September 2012 at 5:39AM

The only thing that I could think of at first was you changing company car half-way through the year, but that can't be the case in your circumstance.

It may be worth dealing with HMRC, then contacting the company in question to find out what's going on. Don't take the 'Data protection' lark, as there is an error here somewhere that needs to be sorted.

At the more serious end of the scale, you could be talking ID fraud.

CK

anmarj · 21 September 2012 at 5:52AM

it sounds like the company in London have got NI numbers mixed up either by what the employee has given them or payroll has mixed up numbers and unless it is brought to their attention I don't see it just beeing resolved like that. If you know the name/address of the company I would be writing a letter to them stating that you are not an employee but they have been using your NI for the wrong person and they need to look into it as it is affecting your tax, explain that you have been in touch with the tax office. I know through my own job that I can send details away for a check to make sure who the NI actually relates to but not sure if the HMRC can do the same.

John_Pierpoint · 21 September 2012 at 7:07AM

The NI number is a shambles waiting to happen. At he basic level it has no check digit so new ones can be "invented" at will or by simple error.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Check_digit
A massive exercise to clean up the mess is needed, but for that task the management/politicians must be "kicking the can.........." ever since the attempt to create a national identity card ground to a stand still.

http://www.hmrc.gov.uk/manuals/nimmanual/NIM39110.htm

The following link gives some idea why it is so difficult to get "rubbish" data taken out of a computer system once it has been accepted.
http://www.hmrc.gov.uk/softwaredevelopers/rti/mig-rti-nvreq.pdf

Tomorrow never comes:

http://www.betterregulation.gov.uk/ideas/viewidea.cfm?proposalid=e38ccfe0572f4e36b0e474770d289568

skintmacflint · 21 September 2012 at 8:52AM

Thanks looks like I might be stuck with this problem every year then. Haven't got the company name or contact but will ask when I phone them yet again.

Doesn't seem like a very secure system mind you, if they can just allocate the tax burden of company cars to anybody based on file data transfers. The wonders of the modern age!!!

Such a long phone queue from memory. Hopefully they won't mess anything else up this time when they fix it. I'm still not sure if they ever returned the small tax overpayment they took due to the incorrect rebate thing, as I can't figure out how these tax codes work and they changed them so many times to correct their mistakes last year.

xylophone · 21 September 2012 at 4:13PM

Write to your tax office setting out all the facts.
Make it clear that your letter is a complaint.
Keep a copy of your letter.
Send your letter recorded delivery.

skintmacflint · 22 September 2012 at 4:32AM

Took an hour on the phone to hopefully have gotten this sorted.

Only after rereading the form did I realise they'd reinstated the non existant' car for the past 3 tax years so the underpayment was for over £3000 worth of tax.

Nice young man went through everything , said my tax history file is a mess due to a number of people having done incomplete work on it. Then advised, the cheque I'd sent back straight away for the incorrect tax rebate for the pension hadn't been allocated back properly, was sitting in a credit pending file, so it looked like I still had an underpayment. Now fixed he said.

At this point I was totally lost. But assured he's sorted it all out now, I don't owe anything, they might owe me £5 or so, and he'll get someone else to check what he's done is correct.

I have to write to ask for the company name re the car, but I get the feeling it's the tax office sytem or their staff who've caused this problem to reoccur.

I recorded the call for future reference, as not sure Ive heard the last of this.

My life and income's been pretty fixed and uninteresting for years, one mistake by someone else seems to have thrown their system into chaos.

Makes me wonder how they manage complicated cases.:eek:

antonic · 22 September 2012 at 7:00AM

The call would have been recorded by HMRC anyway, in case there any disputes in the future, and the transcript is available on request.

(Provided you rang one of those awful 0845 numbers and not a direct dial number)

System · 22 September 2012 at 9:36AM

I agree with xylophone in that you should send in a formal complaint. Despite what the young man on the phone told you. He will no doubt have sent through a referral to the back office processing teams highlighting the issue, and might also have highlighted it as a justifiable complaint but it won't do any harm to put your complaint in writing too.

When you highlighted the fact that you didn't have a company car originally HMRC should have recorded this in your notes, contacted the company concerned to get them to correct the National Insurance number of their employee and set signals on your record which would have stopped any further automatic end of year calculations being done which said you owed tax. It sounds that at the very least the last action was not done and that is why it arose again.

xylophone · 22 September 2012 at 2:44PM

You still need to write (to confirm your understanding of the situation) and also to complain.

skintmacflint · 23 September 2012 at 1:10AM

Will do. If this had happened to my MIL who's in her 90's she'd have been ill. But as J_P posted in a link , they know this can happen, but they consider it too expensive to fix.

Keep being taxed incorrectly for someone's company car

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