HMRC have no record of my payment!!

Sensible_Jess

I received a P800 tax demand for tax underpaid for 2011.
I had no problems with the demand, duly paid up and sent a cheque for the amount in March. The cheque was cashed about three days after I sent it.

Fast forward to today, and I have received a letter (date 9th May - don't you just HATE it when they backdate letters?) saying that I still owe the amount and if I don't pay up I will be fined and they will also be collecting the money from my wages!!

Tried to contact them by phone - usual story of being kept on hold for 30+ minutes. I had to give up and go back to work.....

I've written a letter but I have no other address for them other than the generic one. I am truly stressed and worried as it was paid over seven weeks ago and was a rather large amount that I can't afford to pay twice. What on earth could have happened to it and why don't they have a record of it being paid?

Any help would be gratefully received....:eek:

chrismac1

They are plonkers. They will have cashed the cheque and allocated it to someone else, depressingly common. Only yesterday i was telling them that they had credited a client of mine in having paid a few hundred pounds more PAYE than they actually paid. Doubtless they are getting heavy with some other random employer somewhere who paid the money which they put to my client's account.

Don't expect commonsense - or at least be very surprised when you get it from HMRC, it's a rare bird. Get your bank to put a tracing order on the cheque through the clearing system, they will charge for this but you should be able to get it back from HMRC.

Confront them with the evidence that it is their own stupid fault, stress the hardship and worry this has caused you and ask for a refund of the bank charges and compensation for your distress.

suso

phone between 8:00 and 9:30 Monday to Friday the queue will be miniscule

Have your bank details of how you made the payment, cheque number, sort code, account number, bank name and address, when it cleared the account and where you sent the payment to.

Did you make a payment using a payment slip, or simply reply to the P800 calculation that you received?

Mikeyorks

Sensible_Jess wrote: »

I received a P800 tax demand for tax underpaid for 2011.
I had no problems with the demand, duly paid up and sent a cheque for the amount in March. The cheque was cashed about three days after I sent it.

Did you follow the advice they sent with the P800 ?

If your tax calculation says that we will include any tax you owe in your tax code, we will collect the tax in equal instalments. We do this by increasing the tax deducted from your wages, salary or pension for 12 months from next April.
You do not need to do anything further. If your tax calculation does not say that we will include any tax you owe in your tax code, we will write to you about how to pay. If you would like to pay now, please phone us.

With over 30M PAYE clients .... just sending a cheque off without the P254 payslip they will provide in order to route it to your record - isn't a good idea.

chrismac1

I used to run the finances of an £80m business. Quite often we'd get cheques with the wrong details, or that we thought was meant for someone else. Did we cash it?

NO NO NO !!

We called the customer and asked them which account they thought they were paying. Only when we were clear exactly how to allocate that cheque would we put it through our books. That is how a modern, professional well-organsied finance operation works.

So tell me, how do HMRC do it?

Sensible_Jess

thanks for the replies so far - sorry for the duplicate threads - I am very stressed out!

In answer to questions:
Yes I DID follow the instructions - I used the slip provided with the P800 with my payment. I am more than capable of making a payment correctly, thank you.

I put the reference number on the cheque and I believe I also sent it recorded - although I binned this information after the cheque arrived and it was cashed - TWO MONTHS ago....

Muppets. No wonder this country is going to pot.
I'll try them AGAIN this morning to see if the phone queue is shorter.

le_loup

So one of millions of payments goes astray and this country is going to pot!
Tackle this coolly and you will get further than if you fall apart.

Pennywise

I'd phone AND write, giving full details of cheque number, date cleared, etc. to both. Keep a note of who you spoke to, time & date, and exactly what they said to you. Good advice to get a copy of the cleared cheque from your bank - claim the bank charges from HMRC.

It won't get sorted out any time soon unfortunately. It'll have been applied to the wrong taxpayer's account or have ended up in their suspense account which is a kind of black hole that no-one looks into until they get a complaint of missing money. The call handlers won't be able to delve into it - they'll pass your details onto another department. You'll probably be promised that someone will call you back, but don't hold your breath. More likely, after a further few weeks of hearing nothing, you'll have to contact them again, and maybe again, until it gets sorted.

In the meantime, yes, you'll probably get more threatening letters but you'll just have to reply each time, telling them of the situation and exactly who you've spoken to and when and preferably give them a copy of your cleared cheque.

This kind of thing doesn't happen often (as said above, considering the millions of cheques, it's relatively rare), but when it does happen, it's a real pain trying to get through to people who can actually do something about it. Ultimately it will get sorted, but it's not likely to happen any time soon, especially when HMRC take 4-8 weeks to deal with correspondence and that their call handlers won't personally be able to do anything other than refer it to others who no doubt also have a backlog!

Rupert_Bear

Sensible_Jess wrote: »

thanks for the replies so far - sorry for the duplicate threads - I am very stressed out!

In answer to questions:
Yes I DID follow the instructions - I used the slip provided with the P800 with my payment. I am more than capable of making a payment correctly, thank you.

I put the reference number on the cheque and I believe I also sent it recorded - although I binned this information after the cheque arrived and it was cashed - TWO MONTHS ago....

Muppets. No wonder this country is going to pot.
I'll try them AGAIN this morning to see if the phone queue is shorter.

I too followed it all to the letter and about 5 years later they sent me a demand for the paid amount. I was able to get a photocopy of the cheque and sent it to them and the matter was resolved in 4 weeks.

Apparently it ended up in their suspense account even though I returned the cheque with the necessary documentation.

chrismac1

Defintion of Suspense Account for any business large or small:

Suspense Account - we get something and we don't recognise where to post it, we can't be arssed to find out so this is where we dump it until we do. No-one ever looks into this without a rocket up their backside first.

I can assure anyone reading this that anyone who has ever worked for me who ran a sizeable suspense account for longer than one month was not running it the following month as they were working elsewhere - given that they all knew where I stood on this and had adequate training to avoid using suspense in the first place, and how to quickly clear it out where it had been used in a month.

Mikeyorks

Sensible_Jess wrote: »

In answer to questions:
Yes I DID follow the instructions - I used the slip provided with the P800 with my payment. I am more than capable of making a payment correctly, thank you.

There is no 'slip' with the P800. As it is not an invitation to make payment. And if you sent it recorded then you would presumably have an address!

Most underpayments are coded out. Those which are not, because they're generally above £3k they will write to you regarding payment. As it clearly stated in the Notes you received with the P800.