Threatening letters from HMRC

beaujolais-nouveau

emjharts wrote: »

We had our accountant call them and set up a payment plan but they keep sending letters saying that they will be sending people to our home to take our business belongings!

It might be helpful to know that, as at this time last week, HMRC CT office staff were only just starting to open post that arrived in September. Did your accountant write to HMRC to confirm the payment plan agreement and arrangements, and did s/he send the letter by Special Delivery or Signed For post?

emjharts wrote: »

in the meantime they are still sending these threatening letters!
Hopefully within 2 months we will have paid it all off anyway but in the meantime I am scared whenever I hear the doorbell. Are they really going to do this or are they just trying to scare us?

My guess is that it is a different department sending you the threatening letters. You could do as I did and ring them up and say that you and HMRC have agreed a payment plan and that you refuse to be bullied like this when you have already made arrangements to comply, and ask that the penalties be "stood over" until they have got their paperwork up to date.

Incidentally, HMRC are not signing for Special Delivery post - I guess so as to make it harder for people to chase them - I had to get written confirmation from Royal Mail instead. HMRC have yet to respond in any way to two letters from me, one sent in mid-September and the other in early October, by Special Delivery post, and - although the Royal Mail can tell me when they were delivered - there is no proof of delivery signature for either of them.

Mikeyorks

beaujolais-nouveau wrote: »

Incidentally, HMRC are not signing for Special Delivery post - I guess so as to make it harder for people to chase them .

It's a bit incidental to the thread - but HMRC do sign for all aspects of Special Delivery / Recorded. But they get so many that Royal Mail simply stick all the barcodes on A4 sheet(s) and get a composite signature. And it is Royal Mail who do not then update their tracking from that composite.

antonic

emjharts wrote: »

My Husband is a limited company and due to not getting paid by his current clients on time he has not been able to pay all of his Corporation Tax - he had saved up the amount but due to his clients not paying him we have had to live on that money over the past few months.
We had our accountant call them and set up a payment plan but they keep sending letters saying that they will be sending people to our home to take our business belongings! - this amounts to two laptops, a monitor and a scanner in the tiny room that my husband works from! What is going on here? they said they would take 2 months to decide whether the payment plan is OK but in the meantime they are still sending these threatening letters!
Hopefully within 2 months we will have paid it all off anyway but in the meantime I am scared whenever I hear the doorbell. Are they really going to do this or are they just trying to scare us?

When you say your accountant was setting up a payment plan did HMRC actually agree to it ? - if they did then you shouldnt be getting these letters, ask your accountants for proof that it was agreed ( a letter is issued when it is).

If it wasnt agreed and recovery action starts they will visit the premises and decide what action to take, if the business doesnt have sufficient assets they will consider CCP or winding the business up.

If you get a visit from a Field Force agent discuss it with them, they have leeway over what sort of arrangements to accept.

Dont forget this is an ACTUAL debt (based on figures supplied by the company) so there is no doubt on the accuracy.

custardy

Mikeyorks wrote: »

It's a bit incidental to the thread - but HMRC do sign for all aspects of Special Delivery / Recorded. But they get so many that Royal Mail simply stick all the barcodes on A4 sheet(s) and get a composite signature. And it is Royal Mail who do not then update their tracking from that composite.

thats old school
by now most if not all RM delivery offices should be doing bulk deliveries via PDA
there is no real limit ot the number that can be scanned via PDA
though it is time consuming

Steve62

Have you read how HMRC have scrapped a lot of issues due to major problems last year at the department and the sheer amount of complaints they were getting?

Ballymackeonan

I've seen this happening with a company in the construction industry, which had arrears on VAT and PAYE. They agreed a payment plan and have kept to it for the last 5 months, plus psying the current amounts, then got 2 threatening letters on the same day with the original arrears amounts, in other words the payments on account seemed to have vanished into the ether.

When they phoned, it turned out that two departments have not been communicating....

antonic

Thats because they are very often in different buildings (even if their in the same city) and the reference numbers arent often linked.

Hence the communication mixup.

Mikeyorks

But the database containing the accounting is only a single entity and therefore the data should only come from that source as regards payments made / balances outstanding?

And as most 'threatening letters' - containing a value - are now issued off the database, then something doesn't quite compute!

emjharts

our accountant told us this

sunshinetours

OP ask your accountant to show you proof of the payment plan acceptance. If you have that then a quick call to the number should put that one to bed.

I've had this happen to several clients and HMRC have been wrong in every single case. Their ssystems are poor and still being updated and tehy are only as good as the staff putting information on or updating it. I would imgaine many of them working under the threat of job losses etc aren't exactly working at peak performance