Underpaid tax...again

bunnyfuller

Hi all,

Received a lovely letter from HMRC saying I owe them 931 each yr for 2008/9 - 2009/10.

I immediately phoned and the first person I spoke to sounded almost astonished that I would want an explanation for how it happened, and accused me of not informing them of pay rises (I work for the police and am pretty sure they inform them!)

So, digging a bit further it now transpires that HMRC say my RAF pension provider failed to use the codes HMRC issued them. Xafinity, of course, say they used exactly what HMRC told them to.

I am going with HMRC for now, and with that tack have looked into where it says if employer/pension payer fails to apply correct tax code HMRC should recover it through them, and not the person.

Letter is written and ready to go by recorded delivery Monday, so wish me luck.

Any experiences with this would be welcome

Nic

System

bunnyfuller wrote: »

Hi all,

Received a lovely letter from HMRC saying I owe them 931 each yr for 2008/9 - 2009/10.

Just wondering but do you owe £931 for each year or was the £931 carried forward from the 08/09 calculation into the 09/10 calculation meaning you owe £931 altogether for the 2 years. The final figure at the bottom of the 09/10 calculation would be £1862 if you owed it for each year.

BTW found this link on the HMRC website re employer error - http://www.hmrc.gov.uk/thelibrary/tax-paye/employer-errors-deduction-paye.pdf

If you haven't got your coding notices for your pension then I would ask HMRC to confirm the exact dates codes were issued to Xafinity and what those codes actually were and then check them against your pension payslips before sending in an employer error query.

Sambucus_Nigra

bunnyfuller wrote: »

Hi all,

Received a lovely letter from HMRC saying I owe them 931 each yr for 2008/9 - 2009/10.

I immediately phoned and the first person I spoke to sounded almost astonished that I would want an explanation for how it happened, and accused me of not informing them of pay rises (I work for the police and am pretty sure they inform them!)

So, digging a bit further it now transpires that HMRC say my RAF pension provider failed to use the codes HMRC issued them. Xafinity, of course, say they used exactly what HMRC told them to.

I am going with HMRC for now, and with that tack have looked into where it says if employer/pension payer fails to apply correct tax code HMRC should recover it through them, and not the person.

Letter is written and ready to go by recorded delivery Monday, so wish me luck.

Any experiences with this would be welcome

Nic

Hi - where does it say that they should recover it from the pension payer and not the person - my mum had the same problem and is paying back £1k and a reference would be fantastic to try and get this back for her....

ETA: - just saw your link Pam - many thanks...

Gertie_Walker

I agree - what notices of coding were you sent and did you check these were opertaed by your pension provider? Its the taxpayer's responsibility to check his affairs are in order.
Recorded delivery letters are a waste of money to HMRC as they dont sign for them and would dispute the contents of a letter as you can't prove what was in it.

chrismac1

First, post up the Gross Pay, Tax Paid in year and final tax codes from the P60s and P45s for the relevant tax years. There are many people on this site who can quickly and accurately calculate your tax, which HMRC seem generally incapable of - unless you count a 50% accuracy rate as a success in which case HMRC are excellent!

System

Gertie_Walker wrote: »

....
Recorded delivery letters are a waste of money to HMRC as they dont sign for them and would dispute the contents of a letter as you can't prove what was in it.

Just shows the poor state of affairs with trust levels between tax payers and HMRC

If HMRC do not sign for receipt of recorded delivery, then at least you have a record of when the letter was posted (Special delivery options are available to track in more detail)
I would love to be a fly on the wall during a court case where HMRC attempted to "dispute the contents of a letter" when provided with evidence of the date posted and a dated copy of the letter.

Yes, it is possible to produce altered copies of letters etc. but why would a court think that a tax payer would need to alter the contents. And why would HMRC want to dispute the contents - paranoia is tending to creep in too often me thinks (Unless you have a specific example of this actually occuring ?)

suso

chrismac1 wrote: »

First, post up the Gross Pay, Tax Paid in year and final tax codes from the P60s and P45s for the relevant tax years. There are many people on this site who can quickly and accurately calculate your tax, which HMRC seem generally incapable of - unless you count a 50% accuracy rate as a success in which case HMRC are excellent!

chrismac uses his own method of maths, there is no proof what so ever that 50% of calculations are incorrect. looking at the posts on this site, well over 3/4's of the actual calculations are correct. chrismac posts this amazing stastic without any proof.

Of the ones I have seen then 95% are correct.

but a lot of chrismacs clients seem to have problems. A statistic based on his method of maths.

there is a common denominator in his statements, I'll leave you to work it out.

chrismac1

"a lot of chrismacs clients seem to have problems". This is true only if 1 client meets your definition of "a lot" as I have 1 client who is owed 1,839 and has been sent a bill for 1,500. None of my other clients are affected. However it comes as no surprise to me to learn that HMRC now define 1 as "a lot".

Getting back to the point, the general theme on the UK Business Forum, the Accountancy Age forum and discussions I have had with some local accountants is that around half of these assessments are incorrect. Some have horrific blunders that only truly abysmal IT systems implementations can produce, such as doubling the taxpayer's income. I used to see payroll records for a business with over 5,000 employees, it is almost unheard of for a PAYE person under £100k to double his or her income from one tax year to the next, how hard could it have been to build in this sense check to the system?

There are many other similar sense checks that have not been put in there. Someone came to me last week with £45k in tax he supposedly owes via the CIS scheme in which he registered by mistake and gets a £100 fine churned out every month. Anyone with any commonsense would have programmed the system to stop churning out these bills after say 12 months and figure out that the guy should be taken off the system.

Telling a 19-year old taxpayer who has 3 bar jobs that "it's your fault, it's your responsiblity to check your own tax codes" sums up everything that's wrong in HMRC and how we've got to this monumental mess - and why it won't be fixed anytime soon by the folk who created the mess.

Mikeyorks

BAA1 wrote: »

If HMRC do not sign for receipt of recorded delivery,)

They do sign for them. But it's a single signature for whatever the mailsack - holds onto a page(s) containing the barcodes of all the letters.
And - when they're opened and passed to the appropriate pile - the audit trail to the fact they were ever recorded just evaporates. Which I think was GW's intent?

Or do you consider they merit priority?

suso

chrismac1 wrote: »

"a lot of chrismacs clients seem to have problems". This is true only if 1 client meets your definition of "a lot" as I have 1 client who is owed 1,839 and has been sent a bill for 1,500. None of my other clients are affected. However it comes as no surprise to me to learn that HMRC now define 1 as "a lot".

Getting back to the point, the general theme on the UK Business Forum, the Accountancy Age forum and discussions I have had with some local accountants is that around half of these assessments are incorrect. Some have horrific blunders that only truly abysmal IT systems implementations can produce, such as doubling the taxpayer's income. I used to see payroll records for a business with over 5,000 employees, it is almost unheard of for a PAYE person under £100k to double his or her income from one tax year to the next, how hard could it have been to build in this sense check to the system?

There are many other similar sense checks that have not been put in there. Someone came to me last week with £45k in tax he supposedly owes via the CIS scheme in which he registered by mistake and gets a £100 fine churned out every month. Anyone with any commonsense would have programmed the system to stop churning out these bills after say 12 months and figure out that the guy should be taken off the system.

Telling a 19-year old taxpayer who has 3 bar jobs that "it's your fault, it's your responsiblity to check your own tax codes" sums up everything that's wrong in HMRC and how we've got to this monumental mess - and why it won't be fixed anytime soon by the folk who created the mess.

i am not HMRC, I am not employed by HMRC, once again you are incorrect.

You have clients that have not completed their returns for earlier years,

You will see that you refuse to communicate to HMRC in example of POA, when your client is being chased for estimation of tax due
(links coming soon)

Their is no proof of the fact that half of the calculations are incorrect.
although you do change your stats to "over", "around", "approx" "50%"



regarding you other points in this message

i said looking at the other posts ON THIS SITE I said that over 3/4 of the calculations are correct, prove me wring,

I did not refer general themes on other sites, or local conversations that could not be proved.

I did not ask for people that have registered by CIS by mistake, as that is a totally irrelevant issue, if someone is in CIS then the PAYE reconciliation issue is not applicable to them as they will fill in a SA return.

People doubling there income, then yes its possible and occurs frequently. - ever heard of bonus's ?

If a person has 3 jobs do you not think they should take some repsonsibility for their tax affairs, the P46 is quite a simple form to complete, because a student / teenager thinks they are too young to pay tax or the local students union says they are don't have to pay tax doesn't mean its right.

In the this day and age of the internet there is so much more information available then when I started work in 1968. Ignorance is not a defence.

I expect you to keep on churning out your usual unproved and irrelevant statistics

System

Mikeyorks wrote: »

They do sign for them. But it's a single signature for whatever the mailsack - holds onto a page(s) containing the barcodes of all the letters.
And - when they're opened and passed to the appropriate pile - the audit trail to the fact they were ever recorded just evaporates. Which I think was GW's intent?

Or do you consider they merit priority?

Many thanks for the added information concerning how HMRC handle their incoming post - most interesting.

I do not consider that registered post should "merit priority", just that HMRC should treat ALL post with due diligence, no more, no less.

Anyway, the OP now has a little more background info about HMRC's post handling process, so can make an informed decision of what method to use