Is my bank on the fiddle ?

Uncertain

Seriously I wonder.....

I've just been gathering figues together to give to my accountant. This includes the tiny amount of interest on my current accounts. Two out of three are fine, with 20% tax being stopped correctly from the amount, give or take a penny due to rounding.

However the third bank have stopped only 3p tax from 35p interest! Now, are they only going to give HMRC 3p or the correct amount of 7p?

Why am I wasting time typing this about 4p? Well, if you have many millions of accounts then 4p from each one is a lot of money!

Interestingly this is not the first time I had problems with this bank's interest calculations. A while back, when monthly savings accounts were popular, I opened five at different banks and paid £250 per month into each from the highest interest current account I could find at the time. I set up an Excel spreadsheet to keep track of each and it calculated the interest as the capital increased monthly.

At the end of the year four of the accounts were within a penny or two of my spreadsheet but the fifth was around £7 out.

I wrote asking for an explanation of their calculations which they refused, simply stating in effect that they were never wrong. I persisted and was given the £7 as " a goodwill gesture" but they refused to explain their sums.

Now, £7 times millions of accounts................

Ummm....

noh

Actually it is you that is 4p up not the bank.
Are you going to forward it to HMRC?

Biggles

I imagine the interest was paid monthly and the tax ended up being rounded up to 1p more often than it was rounded down to 0p?

dougz_2

Which bank account was it? Then others here could check theirs.

Uncertain

noh wrote: »

Actually it is you that is 4p up not the bank.

I am, but who's fault is it?

If, for example, an employer was treating somebody as self employed when they should have been deducting PAYE HMRC will go after the employer and not the individual.

Uncertain

Biggles wrote: »

I imagine the interest was paid monthly and the tax ended up being rounded up to 1p more often than it was rounded down to 0p?

Wasn't there a fraud many years ago where somebody in a bank's IT department managed to divert all these fractions of a penny to their personal account? If I remember correctly no individual lost out so nobody complained and it went on for a long while.

bendix

Uncertain wrote: »

I am, but who's fault is it?

If, for example, an employer was treating somebody as self employed when they should have been deducting PAYE HMRC will go after the employer and not the individual.

I think you need to get out more. Look up at the sky. Smell the grass in the rain. Go to a gallery and marvel at the wondrous beauty of human creation.

Alternatively, you could write a post accusing the banks of diddling customers of 4p when it is, in fact, you that have benefited.

Here's a tip. Give the 4p to charity.

Then everyone's happy, ok?

Lokolo

bendix wrote: »

I think you need to get out more. Look up at the sky. Smell the grass in the rain. Go to a gallery and marvel at the wondrous beauty of human creation.

Alternatively, you could write a post accusing the banks of diddling customers of 4p when it is, in fact, you that have benefited.

Here's a tip. Give the 4p to charity.

Then everyone's happy, ok?

That made my morning

bendix

Lokolo wrote: »

That made my morning

Seriously .. you have to wonder at people sometimes, don't you?

Uncertain

bendix wrote: »

Seriously .. you have to wonder at people sometimes, don't you?

You may well do, but that is why my original post (if you bothered to read it) said....

Why am I wasting time typing this about 4p? Well, if you have many millions of accounts then 4p from each one is a lot of money!

And went on the the far more important point about the method of calculating interest on monthly deposit accounts where one bank is out of step with four others to the tune of £7 on one account.

Still, with your skill in trying to ridicule instead of answering the question, you should get a job as an MP or in a customer relations department!

nzseries1

Uncertain wrote: »

Wasn't there a fraud many years ago where somebody in a bank's IT department managed to divert all these fractions of a penny to their personal account? If I remember correctly no individual lost out so nobody complained and it went on for a long while.

I think you're thinking of the 1997 movie "Office Space"