MSE News: Hundreds of thousands more tax errors found

roddydogs

According to the Daily Mail, if you are a pensioner, and its no fault of your own, the owed tax will be written off.

dori2o

BAA1 wrote: »

This seems to be another case of lack of training for the HMRC staff. This particular "HMRC lady" obviously did not know how to setup your tax records so that your employment salary had the appropriate tax code applied, if you had been fortunate enough to be speaking to a more experienced member of HMRC staff, then it may have been done correctly, I would keep phoning until you find someone at HMRC who can set it up correctly.

I don't think it is a training issue.

Unfortunately call centre staff, as well as being under pressure to keep call times low and handle as many calls as possible without properly investigating the problems, are now being forced to use CALL TYPE PROCESSES.

These are in real terms scripts. Unfortunately as tax can be a complex subject, these scripts are completely useless and in most (99%) of cases do not meet the requirements of the calls being received.

However, call centre advisors are marked down if one of the questions in the specific call type process is not asked, whether it is needed or not, and can face disciplinary action for not using them, even if the call has been resolved correctly and the customer is happy.

As an example.

Before call type processes came into place an average call regarding issuing a new tax code to an employer would take maybe 3-5 minutes. This is an everyday common call. The first thing you learn how to do.

With the Call Type Processes, it now takes 5-10 minutes, and you have to ask a lot of irrelevant questions to get to the answer.

Unfortunately, these processes that are brought in are thought up by the middle management who sit in their office and have to do something to justify their jobs. The majority of them have absolutely no tax knowledge what so ever.

System

dori2o wrote: »

I don't think it is a training issue.

Unfortunately call centre staff, as well as being under pressure to keep call times low and handle as many calls as possible without properly investigating the problems, are now being forced to use CALL TYPE PROCESSES.

These are in real terms scripts. Unfortunately as tax can be a complex subject, these scripts are completely useless and in most (99%) of cases do not meet the requirements of the calls being received.

However, call centre advisors are marked down if one of the questions in the specific call type process is not asked, whether it is needed or not, and can face disciplinary action for not using them, even if the call has been resolved correctly and the customer is happy.

As an example.

Before call type processes came into place an average call regarding issuing a new tax code to an employer would take maybe 3-5 minutes. This is an everyday common call. The first thing you learn how to do.

With the Call Type Processes, it now takes 5-10 minutes, and you have to ask a lot of irrelevant questions to get to the answer.

Unfortunately, these processes that are brought in are thought up by the middle management who sit in their office and have to do something to justify their jobs. The majority of them have absolutely no tax knowledge what so ever.

This sounds like a real screw-up, those middle managers should be sacked and HMRC need to let the experienced HMRC tax advisors do a proper job.

However, even if the call centre advisor was using one of these "processes" it should not have prevented them from assigning the appropriate code to the correct income stream for the OP(s)

dori2o

BAA1 wrote: »

This sounds like a real screw-up, those middle managers should be sacked and HMRC need to let the experienced HMRC tax advisors do a proper job.

However, even if the call centre advisor was using one of these "processes" it should not have prevented them from assigning the appropriate code to the correct income stream for the OP(s)

Thats the problem though, it may be that very CTP (call type process) that is not allowing the advisor to do so.

I know that in the real world you can set the system to put whichever source wanted as 'primary', however it may be that the CTP is telling the advisor which source must be the primary. If the advisor goes against the CTP it is the advisor that get into trouble. It's simply not worth it to them.

Personally if I had taken the call I would have changed the sources around. There is nothing built into the system to stop you doing this. However I have an understanding manager as as long as the call is right and I have done everything correct and there is no 'negative material impact' on the customer then I could get away with not following the CTP.

The rule used to be to do whatever the taxpayer asked (within reason), as long as you explained what the outcome would be if they were asking for something that could leave them underpaid/overpaid etc at the end of the year. The calls are recorded so if the taxpayer complained the call could be traced and an explanation of the underpayment given.

HMRC is so against negative press now though that it is doing all it can to reduce any error, though this is making the advisors job harder and harder, and thus this knocks on to the customer, but what it isn't doing is addressing the real reasons why errors are being made, i.e. reduction in staff levels, experienced tax officers leaving in their numbers, reduction in training, low staff moral, constant changes and moving of goalposts.

Until something is done to stop the beuraucracy that is running rife within the middle management at HMRC we're doomed to live with this service for the foreseable future.

RacyRed

Mikeyorks wrote: »

I didn't think any HMRC call-centre staff went back that far! I can barely remember it.

Nor do I, but I've had to point it out a couple of times this season.

It appears that way. But I can't comprehend it as it's really just a bit of added income ... the rules don't change?

But it does need a bit of caffeine to settle down to age related allowances which are subject to the clawback rules - where income exceeds £22900? And the 10% Savings income rules.

Hopefully at least the first one is on the way out if the universal PA of £10k+ is reached

It is easier if you are looking at total income for a past year, but trying to work out what is going on during the tax year when a K code is in operation isn't quite so easy, at least not for the average taxpayer. And that is what is often required, as I'm sure you appreciate .

Minerva69

My husband is disabled and gets an occupational pension from his previous employer. He got his pension advice slip in the post and has been put on an emergency tax code, so has paid far too much tax on his pension this month. He rang up HMRC to sort it out, the person he spoke to said he could see straight away there was a problem and it should be sorted out in time for next month's payment (fingers crossed). He also said it had happened to a lot of people this month, whether employed or receiving pensions - so please check your payslip/payment advice carefully this month as there may be errors!

fred_davies

Hi all

....me too. Looks like they want £1040 from 2007-08 because they took my personal allowance into account twice.

I changed jobs in mid-February 2008 so the IR were provided with my tax code etc - the correct tax code was even on my P60. What they seem to have done is have '0' in the 'previous employment' box, thus not taxing me properly for that first month I was there, effectively starting me from scratch.

I thought as the firm was an American employer (in the UK) that my personal allowance was worked out differently - it being calculated 0% for month 1-2 covering £5k, then 10% after that till next bracket, then 22%... incrementally over the whole year.

No reason to doubt they'd not got it right.

Anyone any advice on an 'ESC A19'? Is anyone likely to be able to claim successfully from this?
Some info: http://www.taxadvicenetwork.co.uk/content.asp?PageID=141&ArticleID=668&ma=1

The fact they blatantly messed it up and its from three years ago is very annoying.

dori2o

fred_davies wrote: »

Hi all

....me too. Looks like they want £1040 from 2007-08 because they took my personal allowance into account twice.

I changed jobs in mid-February 2008 so the IR were provided with my tax code etc - the correct tax code was even on my P60. What they seem to have done is have '0' in the 'previous employment' box, thus not taxing me properly for that first month I was there, effectively starting me from scratch.

I thought as the firm was an American employer (in the UK) that my personal allowance was worked out differently - it being calculated 0% for month 1-2 covering £5k, then 10% after that till next bracket, then 22%... incrementally over the whole year.

No reason to doubt they'd not got it right.

Anyone any advice on an 'ESC A19'? Is anyone likely to be able to claim successfully from this?
Some info: http://www.taxadvicenetwork.co.uk/content.asp?PageID=141&ArticleID=668&ma=1

The fact they blatantly messed it up and its from three years ago is very annoying.

So what seems to have happened is you had you allowance as normal from April 07 to February 08, then your new employer has given you the allowance again. Am I correct?

Did HMRC issue a tax code to your new employer or have they operated what was on your P45?

It could be that HMRC are not actually at fault here, Tax codes are not normally issued to employers in year from the 2nd week in February through to the ens of the tax year due to the fact it is unlikely they will be received by employers in time to be operated.

njmpk14

Hi all

This is my first post on here, I hope you can help

I received a letter from the HMRC saying that I underpaid in 08/09 by £672 - eek! I have been with the same employer for 8 years so I dont know how my tax code could have got so messed up. Also this may be really naive but how can it be my fault if they have given my employer the wrong tax code?

There is a small amount of information on it might be your employers fault if they have given you the wrong tax code, but how do I find this out?

Sorry to be a pain, any advice will be appreciated

Nicki

Mikeyorks

If you post the details from the P800 (underpayment notice) and the detail from your 08/09 P60 (pay / tax / Code number) someone will have a look at it.

There's too many possibilities to hazard a guess without some info. For HMRC to switch the liability to your employer they need to have some evidence of negligence on the employers part. If (eg) your payroll was outsourced and there were lots of issues - that would be a step towards it?