Need some tax advice - HMRC complaint

torizia

Hi all,

This is a bit long and complicated but I'll try and keep it simple! Basically, I'm complaining about two underpayments of tax which HMRC want to take off me, and want to know what my rights are.

First off, I received a letter from HMRC today advising that I owe £300 because I did not pay tax on my staff mortgage from October 2010 to April 2011. However, I phoned to query this, because in September 2010 I spoke to someone at HMRC to advise them of my new benefit, they took details of the amount etc, told me that this would be added to my account immediately and sent me a tax code afterwards. When I phoned today, I was advised that they had a record of my call in September and of sending out a tax code in October, but they never made any change to my account and therefore didn't charge me for the staff mortgage. Please can anyone advise if I have any grounds for complaint here, as I was assured that I would definitely pay tax effective immediately, and am now being chased for an underpayment.

My second one is a bit more confusing. Basically, I had two part time jobs whilst I was at university, and HMRC 'didn't know' so I underpaid tax. However, they sent me a letter in February 2008 about the previous tax year - stating that I had two jobs and would be taxed accordingly to pay back the underpayment - and then did not make the appropriate changes to my tax code. They have since advised me that this was not their fault, as they told my company to take the higher payments - this was just never applied by my company. They have told me to write a letter requesting that they investigate why my company did not take these payments. Please can anyone tell me what my rights are here, as this is another underpayment of over £200, which I again thought I had paid back.

Sorry for the very long message - I'm just getting very frustrated about how terrible the HMRC system seems to be!

Thanks :j

agrinnall

You can try googling for ESC19, or wait until people who know more than me turn up to give their view. However, you don't seem to dispute that you haven't in fact paid the amounts that HMRC are asking for, even though you thought it should have been taken, so perhaps you could accept that you should pay what you owe and ask them for a payment plan to repay it over a period (in fact, as it's only £500 they may be prepared to alter your tax code for 2012/3 and take it over 12 months).

Mikeyorks

torizia wrote: »

I was advised that they had a record of my call in September and of sending out a tax code in October, but they never made any change to my account

So what was the Code change for in October (of which you should have had a copy)? What did they change?

They have told me to write a letter requesting that they investigate why my company did not take these payments. Please can anyone tell me what my rights are here,

To write the requested letter and they will investigate 'employer error'? As HMRC advised you of the underpayment in Feb 08 - did you not have a copy of the Coding Notice showing this was to be recovered?