P800 Tax underpaid.

benjo

Thanks Pam17, just surprised that they havent even acknowledged receipt of the letter yet, I will be patient.

System

benjo wrote: »

Thanks Pam17, just surprised that they havent even acknowledged receipt of the letter yet, I will be patient.

It can take 6 to 8 weeks for post to be worked so if they are waiting for a reply from the pension provider that could be causing the delay too. Give them a call and ask for a progress update

suso

HMRC will be considering if the appeal can be considered under regulation 72 - operation of PAYE scheme, but if it is simply a case of the code issued is not used by the pension provider it is unlikely to be considered. It is for more extreme cases of when the code has been operated incorrectly.

benjo

Just a quick update, received a letter today thanking me for my letter of 15th March - sorry for the delay but the matter is under enquiry, they will contact me soon and let me know of the outcome.

Funny I had only written to them again yesterday repeating my request.

benjo

Another none eventful update, it is now over 7 months since we originally wrote to HMRC asking them to look into the matter of underpayment and apart from one letter in June saying they would contact us 'soon' we have heard nothing.

I had thought of ringing to chase them up, but I am more interested to see just how long they will take under their own steam to resolve this issue.

dori2o

Depending on what you put in the letter they could be waiting for a response from the pension provider.

If you claimed that you believe it is the responsibility of the pension provider that this underpayment has arisen, they will write to the pension provider first odf all asking them to pay the shortfall, or to write back with an explanation as to why they believe it is not due.

If the pension provider has yet to reply, this can be the cause of the delay.

Phone HMRC and find out what the current position is. Any letter that have been sent to the employer will be noted on the record.

chrismac1

My own opinion of Uk pension providers - or at least the ones which deal with my clients - is pretty low. Not as low as my opinion of HMRC or banks, but not far above the relegation zone. Considering in many cases they are dealing - by definition - with frail and often not that healthy people, they could put more effort into communicating properly with them and leaving jargon out of the picture. I'd lose about 10% of my client base if both the penion providers and HMRC were to suddenly start doing this, is that a pig I see flying past the window.

Leaving aside the precise definition of Esc A19, if you were my client and HMRC tried to stick you with this one, I'd be using every resource in the book to fight it, including for example my MP and the local paper if the "normal channels" were not working. It's now nearly 4 years since the final month of the error, nearly 5 since the first month of it. Even if HMRC choose to turn a blind eye to your vulnerable status as a pensioner facing high inflation right now, your MP and possibly local paper won't.

benjo

Oh my goodness, we got another p800 today for the tax year 2010/2011 - asking for £1140.02 and for the life of me I couldnt see any explaination as to how the underpayment occurred - so I rang HMRC (also had a new tax code notification saying they will recover the underpayment).

Seems that above amount includes the 2007/2008 underpayment amount and a further amount from 2010/2011 - which occurred due to a "week one/month one" tax code being used..... simples .... not to me.

I asked why the recovery was taking place now, since I havent yet had a response to the appeal made in March, I asked if they had heard from my pension provider ......... they dont know, there is no note of them contacting my pension provider, infact, no notes on my file at all since they wrote saying they would investigate, seems nothing has been actioned.

The lady said she would make a referal to the customer operations department, but couldnt stop the recovery going ahead this month.

I asked if 9 months was a reasonable time to wait for a response to an appeal - no she said, it is a terribly long time to wait.

I just couldnt understand her explaination about week one/month one tax codes - I dont know what it means and no matter what she said I still didnt understand her and I just dont know what to do next.

Any ideas?

Mikeyorks

benjo wrote: »

I just couldnt understand her explaination about week one/month one tax codes -

They're normally appended to a tax code where, for example, a Code is lowered late in the year and this stops a significant amount of tax being deducted.

http://www.hmrc.gov.uk/paye/intro/tax-codes.htm#3

chrismac1

Actually nine months is not that unusual, nearly twelve months is my own record to get a response. In that case they were not chasing the debt actively and it looked like the client probably did owe quite a bit, so no reason for us to move things along.......

In my experience, one thing that gets HMRC fingers out of arrrses is a Formal Complaint. Mark the envelope COMPLAINT CASE and put that in capitals in the title of your letter. They've treated you appallingly, it's not as if you're well paid 50% taxpayers or anything. Don't take it personally it's just shambolic incompetence. Once client I finally resolved - with a COMPLAINT CASE - was mentally handicapped for 30 years and had taxable income of under £3,000. The idiots mixed his record with an accountancy partner of the same surname living 200 miles away earning loads of money, it toook numerous letters and phone calls and the Complaint to so much as get anyone to admit to making this mistake.