Summary warrant

Mikeyorks

Purdy2011 wrote: »

when his accountant looked over the files he agreed with the tax office before xmas that he owed £7k, we cant get in touch with the accountant as he is on holiday.

With respect - your original posts appeared to imply HMRC had suggested you contact an accountant. Not that you had one and who had been instrumental in filing SA Returns.

It is the accountant you need to fire up and get this resolved. It is too complex, mainly because of your lack of detail, to resolve via a forum.

If the accountant had agreed £7000 - then that should be the figure you are looking at. But this looks awfully like a HMRC 'determination' in the absence of figures. So your husband does need to ensure the accountant isn't telling you one thing ..... but not doing much in the HMRC direction.

jennifernil

That is what you need to check by making the calculations. Never assume anything. If his code number was possibly wrong, the PAYE tax deducted would also be wrong.

jennifernil

Mikeyorks wrote: »

If the accountant had agreed £7000 - then that should be the figure you are looking at. But this looks awfully like a HMRC 'determination' in the absence of figures. So your husband does need to ensure the accountant isn't telling you one thing ..... but not doing much in the HMRC direction.

"determination".....that's the word I was looking for.

My thoughts too, but the OP does say SAs were submitted.

chrismac1

I advise remaining calm and gathering as much information together as you can. In November one of my clients had a visit from HMRC credit control who were seeking to wind up her perfectly solvent business with 13 employees. My client was shattered by the floods in Cockermouth in Nov 09 which wiped her out, and with illness and other personal issues she'd not filed a VAT return since. HMRC had kindly "estimated" her VAT at over £30k. I've no idea where they got this figure from unless they assumed a sudden 50% increase in her sales despite the floods and the recession!

The real figure - now myself and my book-keeper have got to the bottom of things - is just over £10k, compared to £15k which we'd estimated in the meeting. Although the HMRC visitors were very hostile and very unhelpful, not taking any actions from the meeting and even taking over 5 minutes to provide an address, their threats to begin winding up proceedings within 7 days have proven groundless, I think I've been able to inject a bit of commonsense into things a bit higher up the HMRC food chain.

Purdy2011

Mikeyorks wrote: »

With respect - your original posts appeared to imply HMRC had suggested you contact an accountant. Not that you had one and who had been instrumental in filing SA Returns.

It is the accountant you need to fire up and get this resolved. It is too complex, mainly because of your lack of detail, to resolve via a forum.

If the accountant had agreed £7000 - then that should be the figure you are looking at. But this looks awfully like a HMRC 'determination' in the absence of figures. So your husband does need to ensure the accountant isn't telling you one thing ..... but not doing much in the HMRC direction.

HMRC told him to speak to his accountant, but due to the holidays etc we cannot get hold of him and the letter gives us 7 days to respond. we have emailed te letter to te accountant but had no response from him.

jennifernil

Surely they are not expecting a written response within 7 days at this time of year?

My response, after checking as suggested above, would have been to immediately write to dispute the amount and to ring them to say the letter was in the post.

antonic

VAT Central Assessments are calculated on the average of the last 4 VAT returns that have been submitted, if NO returns have been submitted at all then its based on the average of the Trade Class they registered for VAT.

It wasnt HMRC Credit Control who visited your client, it was a Field Force Agent.

chrismac1 wrote: »

I advise remaining calm and gathering as much information together as you can. In November one of my clients had a visit from HMRC credit control who were seeking to wind up her perfectly solvent business with 13 employees. My client was shattered by the floods in Cockermouth in Nov 09 which wiped her out, and with illness and other personal issues she'd not filed a VAT return since. HMRC had kindly "estimated" her VAT at over £30k. I've no idea where they got this figure from unless they assumed a sudden 50% increase in her sales despite the floods and the recession!

The real figure - now myself and my book-keeper have got to the bottom of things - is just over £10k, compared to £15k which we'd estimated in the meeting. Although the HMRC visitors were very hostile and very unhelpful, not taking any actions from the meeting and even taking over 5 minutes to provide an address, their threats to begin winding up proceedings within 7 days have proven groundless, I think I've been able to inject a bit of commonsense into things a bit higher up the HMRC food chain.

Purdy2011

that is what is worrying me the most (well apart from having to sell the house to pay £70000)
When my husband spoke to HMRC they lady he had spoken to before Christmas has now left and the lady who signed the letter was away on holiday and the lady he spoke to didnt know anything about it and wasnt able to find anything out but said to adhere to the conditions of the letter - she was so unhelpful she only served to panic us further. The other difficulty is that he is working every day until the 10th January including evenings so it is left to me to try and sort out but I have no clue about any of these things and am worried I will get it wrong and cause more problems.
I am on the case looking out as much info as I can and then I will sit and try to make sense of it all.

philbostavros

Hi

I know our example is insignificant, compared to the OP's but it does indicate just how shambolic HMRC has become (and just how much disregard they appear to have for how their incompetence could affect us folk).

Mrs Stavros gets a very small company pension and for the last few years, incapacity benefit (after having to retire early, due to severe back problems).

Just before reaching state pension age in September, the HMRC sent her a form asking for details of when her SP would begin, how much, details of her company pension etc.

This was completed promptly but shortly after starting her SP (when the incapacity benefit stopped), she got a new tax coding notice which stated that her SP would be taxed via her occupational pension (just as the ICB had been) but they had shown her to have received £19k ICB (was actually £2k) for the tax year, so would recover underpaid tax via her £153 per month works pension!!!!

After numerous (lengthy and costly) phone calls, they admitted it was a mistake but we were still required to provide all the necessary evidence. It took over a month to sort out and in the meantime, due to the new tax code being operated by her works pension provider), she lost half of the £153 in tax (the max they are allowed to deduct)!

It would have been all the same if we relied heavily on this income (which we don't) but the attitude of the HMRC was "well, you will get it back, once we have sorted out the problem"!!!!

Good luck to the OP - hope your husband get's his accountant to sort it out quickly.

Happy New Year

jennifernil

Purdy2011 wrote: »

that is what is worrying me the most (well apart from having to sell the house to pay £70000)
When my husband spoke to HMRC they lady he had spoken to before Christmas has now left and the lady who signed the letter was away on holiday and the lady he spoke to didnt know anything about it and wasnt able to find anything out but said to adhere to the conditions of the letter - she was so unhelpful she only served to panic us further. The other difficulty is that he is working every day until the 10th January including evenings so it is left to me to try and sort out but I have no clue about any of these things and am worried I will get it wrong and cause more problems.
I am on the case looking out as much info as I can and then I will sit and try to make sense of it all.

Once you have all the figures from all the tax years in question, come back on if you need any help with working it out, it can look daunting, but it's really not that complicated.