The Tax Refund Company

Storm

Awful! Just got my payslip through for the month (with £100 OT, nice!) and included in the envelope was an advert from "The Tax Refund Company"

Basically, they are offering a service to check whether you're owed tax from the revenue for business mileage, professional subscriptions, work uniform, working from home etc etc.

What makes this particularly awful (and I can't believe I got this with my payslip) is that for every £1 tax you claim back through them you will receive 60p - yep, 40% commission :eek: :mad:

Anyone else come across this sort of thing before?

Biddyrolo

Yes, they wrote to me a while ago and it took me a couple of go's to convince them that as I hadn't paid any tax it was unlikely that I was due any back.

CLAPTON

never heard of them but i suppose you could ask, would you prefer 60% of something rather than 100% of nothing, or would you be willing to pay an up front fee of say 100 or whatever. presumably you are on top of your tax situation but a lot of people find tax a bit baffling

rog2

Sounds like the tax equivalent of all of these private Debt Management Companies, or 'no win, no fee legal companies. Either way, they are a private company and are in it to make money.
For anyone who is concerned by their tax situation - try https://www.taxaid.org.uk

lynzpower

Clapton, this is the first time Im ever going to disagree with you!

If you have a payslip, you are employed.

My OH has just recieved a tax rebate heres what happened.

Hed been temping for a year, and there were a numberof weeks when he wasnt working, he suspected hed paid the same ( ish) tax every payday despite having X amount of weeks off. I said just phone up the IR and ask them. he explained as above, they sent him a form asking for him to fill out when he hadnt been working. He did this sent it back about 8 weeks ago, about 3 weeks ago he phoned saying where is my response, they said we are snowed under here give it another 6 weeks you should have it. On monday it arrived, cheque for 116.odd. It does look as if ( as hes had a period of unemployment since starting this process)_ another phone call will be in order over the next six months or so, but even so, this is not a difficult process the forms were easy enough and the helpline were actually very helpful.

Go it alone! you dont need to pay these muppets!

Storm

Hmm, most of the tax refunds though are pretty simple to do as long as you know that you can claim in the first place.

Work mileage is about the only thing that affects me, cos we get paid 35p a mile and so can claim and additional 5p per mile back at the end of the year.

Surely employers/the CAB should be able to inform people of things like this though?

What I'm more annoyed about is that it is an extortionate fee they're charging for something that most people could do themselves with a bit of support if they're not numerically or financially minded!

CLAPTON

lynzpower, well i'm not going to disagree with you (have i ever?)...you're quite right that most people can deal with the situation themselves although not many could actually work out their own tax. in the example you give, if you hadn't encouraged him to phone the IR would he have done that anyway?

Its a small point but if the alternative is doing nothing and there are no upfront fees then the deal is not unreasonable..i do have a lot of reservations about it being included with the payslip but thats really up to the employer.

lynzpower

Maybe there needs to be a tv campaign or something. Periodically the government do say that theeres X billion unclaimed. Also the IR used to just randomly send cheques out, but I havent heard of them doing that recently??

Storm

I agree Lynzpower - I only found out about claiming the extra 5p per mile from a colleague of mine rather than because my company told me or it's well publicised. I did randomly get a tax rebate quite a few years ago when I was a student - I'd worked full time up until the August when i started my course and part-time after that - the rebate did take 2 years to get to me though!

The list of things that was on the advert (for anyone who might be due a rebate) is as follows:

In the last 6 years have you...
Had a child born between 6/4/85 and 5/4/03
Paid a subscription to a professional organisation
Maintain all or part of my work uniform
Use my own car to do my employers business
Worked from home some or all of the time
Had a grandchild living with me

I don't know exactly what you might be able to claim back, but if this applies to anyone I guess the first stop would be https://www.directgov.gov.uk

Emmzi

I got a random cheque 6 weeks ago for 2004/5 tax year.. so it still happens.

Biddyrolo

Sadly it's not that random, back in the day (and maybe still is) it was known as assessing, that wonderful time of year when the tax office got the P35 lists and deduction cards in (their version of P60's) and everyones tax code had to be checked and any refunds due were made or arrangements for underpayments to be paid to the Collector or repaid via tax codes. And all of this without computers. (I left in 83 so way out of touch)