Overpaid tax for 6 years, why only 1 year repaid?

mxadam

Hi all,

I have been overpaying on my tax for the past 6 years due to flat rate expenses. These range from £150-200 per year. They have only sent me a cheque back for the previous year. The total equals around £1.1k, The amount received back is £260!!

Is there any way to challenge this either through them or through a small claims court etc?

If I have overpaid for 6 years its my money which they have taken when they shouldn't have, to me I should receive every penny of that?

Seems like daylight robbery to me.

Cheers,
Adam

CLAPTON

you can claim back for six years

maybe give us some details and we might be able to help a bit

but if you are saying you were incorrectly taxed on 1.1k in expenses then you would expect a refund of 1.1k x 20% which might be about right

mxadam

basically, At my work I have to take a uniform home to clean instead of having it laundered by the company, this I was told was an expense and I contacted HM. They have sent me review of all tax years for the last 6 years. All show overpayment's for flat rate expenses and All say I am owed between £150-250 per year, it varies.

The total amount of overpayments for the last 6 years is around £1.1k Total.

Then they sent a Cheque for only last years overpayment, I dont know what to make of this.

How can I dispute this?

Thanks

CLAPTON

well

what job do you do

but do understand that normally the figure quoted is the value of the expense; the tax relief will be 20% of that figure

mxadam

Im a printer.

For an example this is the previous year, I have 6 years of these all showing the same thing but with varied amounts of tax for each year and amount of repayment. All years eg 2010-2011 are seperate sheets for each tax year.

2010-2011
Tax paid £2478 | Tax payable £2213 (Tax chargeable - Total adjustments)
Repayment due £264.57 (which I recieved a cheque for today - exact amount and it shows Tax calculation tax year 2010-2011 on the letter with the cheque saying due a repayment of income tax for the year shown above)

Am I just jumping the gun and only recieved the one cheque so far. I thought all years should be sent as one cheque?

ladylouise62

It may well be that they do it in stages. I have vague memories of getting the previous years refund first, then earlier stuff.. but I could be wrong, it was a long time ago and my memory isn't what it was :-)

WestonDave

Normally what they do is carry forward from one year to the next and then send you a cheque for the balance shown on the last one. So if in 2006/07 for example it came to £150 overpaid, that amount would then appear as an overpayment carried forward on the 07/08 statement, and might be added to (or subtracted from) for that year's balance to make say £180 overpaid and so on.

Have a really close look and see if anywhere on the latest year one there is an item for overpayment carried forward from previous year.

Bear in mind that you will only get 20% of the expense back. So if you reckon you are owed £1100 in repaid tax, that means that over 6 years you must have spent £5500 on cleaning your uniform which is around £17 per week. Unless you are getting it dry cleaned there is no way you are going to be able to claim that much for a load of washing per week - the £4 per week cleaning cost that your £260 refund represents might be more realistic?

Having said that, they are pretty good at making a total horlicks of it! I still need to go back to them because they managed to undo two previous refunds in the process of refunding my last set of overpayments! So on that basis take the above just as a means of checking not necessarily suggesting they are right!

twig1_2

Here is a link re claiming back overpaid tax
http://www.hmrc.gov.uk/incometax/overpaid-thro-job.htm#1

mxadam wrote: »

Hi all,

I have been overpaying on my tax for the past 6 years due to flat rate expenses. These range from £150-200 per year. They have only sent me a cheque back for the previous year. The total equals around £1.1k, The amount received back is £260!!

Is there any way to challenge this either through them or through a small claims court etc?

If I have overpaid for 6 years its my money which they have taken when they shouldn't have, to me I should receive every penny of that?

Seems like daylight robbery to me.

Cheers,
Adam

terryw

WestonDave wrote: »

Normally what they do is carry forward from one year to the next and then send you a cheque for the balance shown on the last one. So if in 2006/07 for example it came to £150 overpaid, that amount would then appear as an overpayment carried forward on the 07/08 statement, and might be added to (or subtracted from) for that year's balance to make say £180 overpaid and so on.

Have a really close look and see if anywhere on the latest year one there is an item for overpayment carried forward from previous year.

Bear in mind that you will only get 20% of the expense back. So if you reckon you are owed £1100 in repaid tax, that means that over 6 years you must have spent £5500 on cleaning your uniform which is around £17 per week. Unless you are getting it dry cleaned there is no way you are going to be able to claim that much for a load of washing per week - the £4 per week cleaning cost that your £260 refund represents might be more realistic?

Having said that, they are pretty good at making a total horlicks of it! I still need to go back to them because they managed to undo two previous refunds in the process of refunding my last set of overpayments! So on that basis take the above just as a means of checking not necessarily suggesting they are right!

Dead right re the 20 per cent. Here is a link to the fixed rate expenses for all trades.

http://www.hmrc.gov.uk/manuals/eimanual/eim32712.htm

mxadam

Cheers people thats cleared it up still a nice amount to get back which I didnt know about