Tax return calculation differences..?

clairet707

Why do they have to make it so damn difficult to fill in..

Id gone through all the paperwork and calculations on their working out sheet and got an answer of them owing me £111

Just go to fill it in online with all the same numbers and they have it as me owing them 58p

I have no idea where the difference is or how they have worked it out and I have until the 30th to fill it in (this is for 2007-2008)

We have a house we rent out and for that year made a loss of £489 on the house..

For the tax year just gone (2008-2009) we made a profit of around £1062.....
What on earth am I going to have to pay them for that

I phoned them today and the guy didnt know how but it seems that they havent taken into account the £489 loss from the house, he is getting someone who does know to ring me back but it could take up to 48 hours giving me even less time to file it...

Any one on here know whats going on and what if anything I can do myself to rectify it?

Chocforever

£1,062 - £489 = £573 rental income less loss brought forward

This is taxed at your marginal rate. If this is 20%, the tax due is £114. Is this the difference you were looking for?

CF

fengirl_2

There is absolutely no way we can help without knowing all the figures for all your income and tax paid for the two years. Happy to help if you PM me with full details, but I suspect you will be better talking to the tax person.

clairet707

Chocforever wrote: »

£1,062 - £489 = £573 rental income less loss brought forward

This is taxed at your marginal rate. If this is 20%, the tax due is £114. Is this the difference you were looking for?

CF

They wont know about the 1062 yet as I havent filed that return yet - were still waiting for our mortgage company to send us the interest only figures.. - its a rough estimate based on the year befores interest only figure

clairet707

fengirl wrote: »

There is absolutely no way we can help without knowing all the figures for all your income and tax paid for the two years. Happy to help if you PM me with full details, but I suspect you will be better talking to the tax person.

I wasnt asking for help with the figures, just if I had missed off something somewhere that says yes please take into account my loss :rotfl: or something to say to the taxman online to do it :rotfl:

gah why do they make it so difficult, the paper calculation sheet took it out of me, completely and I still have to do current tax years one yet as well....:eek:

Pennywise

Have you entered the loss brought forward from last year in the right place on the online tax return. Each year is "stand alone" and many people assume that brought forward figures will magically appear automatically - they don't - you have to enter them in the right boxes. You may need to tick a box on the online system to say that you're claiming losses and then probably a new screen will appear where you can enter the numbers. I don't use the online system myself (I use bought in software) so I can't direct you to where it is on the HMRC system.

clairet707

Pennywise wrote: »

Have you entered the loss brought forward from last year in the right place on the online tax return. Each year is "stand alone" and many people assume that brought forward figures will magically appear automatically - they don't - you have to enter them in the right boxes. You may need to tick a box on the online system to say that you're claiming losses and then probably a new screen will appear where you can enter the numbers. I don't use the online system myself (I use bought in software) so I can't direct you to where it is on the HMRC system.

Sorry you have lost me completely...

I am only filling in 2007-2008 at the moment, it was my first tax return, I cant fill in 08-09 yet as we are waiting on figures for mortgage.

The loss is from the tax year 07-08

The loss is showing up on the online system when I view the tax return online but its as if the calculation hasnt noticed it...

Still waiting for them to ring back

Pennywise

OK that clears thing up a little. You can't offset the 07/08 loss against other income - it has to be carried forward, so your 07/08 tax will be as calculated on all your other income etc completely ignoring the property loss.

Re 08/09, you bring that loss in as a loss brought forward and set it against the 08/09 property profit, so you pay tax on the net difference.

clairet707

aaaaaaah right.... thanks for that... Nowhere I can see it says that, and the bloke on the phone didn't seem to know that either (not sure what use is someone who doesn't know stuff like that on the phone line)

Thank you very much (they still haven't rang back yet), it explains a lot...

58p I can cope with this year and it will make this years a bit less painful!

dori2o

clairet707 wrote: »

aaaaaaah right.... thanks for that... Nowhere I can see it says that, and the bloke on the phone didn't seem to know that either (not sure what use is someone who doesn't know stuff like that on the phone line)

Thank you very much (they still haven't rang back yet), it explains a lot...

58p I can cope with this year and it will make this years a bit less painful!

It could be that that particular advisor has not been trained in that subject.

For someunknown reason Income from Property is now classed as a technical subject, even though when I started 6 years ago everyone had training in it and everyone dealt with those queries.

Unfortunatelty the problem is that there simply are not enough technical advisors, and the situartion will only get worse once they bring in their cost cutting measures they announced this week and cut the staff headcount in customer contact (contact centres and Enquiry centres) by 20% over the next 3 years.

Pennywise

dori2o wrote: »

Unfortunatelty the problem is that there simply are not enough technical advisors, and the situartion will only get worse once they bring in their cost cutting measures they announced this week and cut the staff headcount in customer contact (contact centres and Enquiry centres) by 20% over the next 3 years.

It's not quantity but quality that matters. They could easily manage with half the staff if everyone was properly trained/experienced. There must be a massive amount of wasted productivity in correcting mistakes made by the untrained staff. By putting untrained staff in the front line, they're wasting everyone's time. The trouble is that a lot of the front line staff "don't know what they don't know" and instead of saying that they don't know, they're giving advice on the cuff and far too many times are getting it wrong. As an accountant, this year to date, I've had to make more formal complaints than ever before - that's not because of lack of front line staff - it's not because of delays in answering correspondence or phone calls - it's because well over half the time, the response from HMRC is wrong, i.e. completing ignoring what's said in a letter and doing something completely different, incorrectly entering data onto their systems, quoting the wrong law/regulation, etc. The answer is to have fewer, better staff, rather than flooding their offices with people who really aren't capable of being on the front line.