Scammed by Entitlements Agency

krism92

Luckily I sent off for a letter to apply thinking these guys were legit. Only after reading the front page of the letter I saw the 17% cut part. A quick google search and I saw this article so rest assured AstroBoy you unfortunate mistake is helping others!

Rather sad to think that this is somehow a legitimate thing that people are allowed to get away with but I guess you can't be too careful these days!

andyl

This seems a most unhelpful thread, instead of criticising people for falling for scams surely the emphasis should be how we get out of using the entitlements agency and claiming our fees back. Are we locked in to this company for good?
I for one wish to know what we can do,

tomtontom

andyl wrote: »

This seems a most unhelpful thread, instead of criticising people for falling for scams surely the emphasis should be how we get out of using the entitlements agency and claiming our fees back. Are we locked in to this company for good?
I for one wish to know what we can do,

You can't reclaim fees for a service already provided - you will have agreed to their commission at the outset.

You're not locked into the company for good. Going forward you are free to make any new claims yourself.

Savvy_Sue

Historically I am not sure what you can do. However for the future you can write to HMRC and withdraw your authorisation for them to communicate with this or any other third party about your personal tax affairs.

Note that if you DON'T do this, I believe that HMRC will continue to communicate with them, and they could well be entitled to continue to claim their cut.

xylophone

Are we locked in to this company for good?
I for one wish to know what we can do,

See post 12 and post 55 above.

Kaycee63

I also requested a tax claim form pack but was only sent a tax claim form I have now just been sent an authorisation letter that they want me to sign allowing them to act as my agents if I haven't given them authority then the tax office should not release any rebates due should they ?

DCFC79

Kaycee63 wrote: »

I also requested a tax claim form pack but was only sent a tax claim form I have now just been sent an authorisation letter that they want me to sign allowing them to act as my agents if I haven't given them authority then the tax office should not release any rebates due should they ?

No they shouldnt.

Use the correct agency folks, it will save you hassle in the future.

Kaycee63

Thanks for the reply

Force5

I have just learnt through HMC that unless I cancel the contract with this company that I am locked in for the following term: 2010 through to 2016 which mean any tax rebate i may have for this period of time has to go through this company! I am sure there was no mention of the length of term of the contract I thought it was a one off! There was also no mention of a fee for doing this.
Like you the papers that came through the door looked like they were form the HMC department not a private company. I hadn't thought about the P60 form!
The government needs to shut this company down. I will never reclaim tax for that period of time again because they are not getting any more of my money!

AstroBoy72 wrote: »

We didn't fill out the reclaim form online, we requested one to be posted. I can remember if it looked the same as the one online but, pretty sure it didn't. We had no idea there were agencies that did this sort of thing so, assumed it was official and probably overlooked some of the details however, I think alarm bells would have rung out if I saw any mention of percentages/fees.

Nothing we can do, apart from submit them to Anonymous I guess

I'm just a little worried about what my wife may have signed now, they still have her P60 and we think she is due another refund.

dori2o

Kaycee63 wrote: »

I also requested a tax claim form pack but was only sent a tax claim form I have now just been sent an authorisation letter that they want me to sign allowing them to act as my agents if I haven't given them authority then the tax office should not release any rebates due should they ?

DCFC79 wrote: »

No they shouldnt.

Use the correct agency folks, it will save you hassle in the future.

Force5 wrote: »

I have just learnt through HMC that unless I cancel the contract with this company that I am locked in for the following term: 2010 through to 2016 which mean any tax rebate i may have for this period of time has to go through this company! I am sure there was no mention of the length of term of the contract I thought it was a one off! There was also no mention of a fee for doing this.
Like you the papers that came through the door looked like they were form the HMC department not a private company. I hadn't thought about the P60 form!
The government needs to shut this company down. I will never reclaim tax for that period of time again because they are not getting any more of my money!
Currently they are not doing anything wrong, unless they are breaking the law or acting outside the guidelines set for them there is nothing that can be done. I deal with these claims (we get thousands every week) and I've seen the claim forms from many different companies.

In my opinion the biggest problem with many of these companies is that they do no work at all with regards to these claims other than to distribute their claim forms, or make themavailable tofillin and print off fromthe internet. They don't check claims to ensure the person is claiming the right thing, many don't submit a 64-8 or include a substitute 64-8 within the claim form, and they don't in most cases even provide a restricted authority (similar to a 64-8 but only allows them to deal only with the claim and no other part of the customer record).

They don't even check to see if the taxpayer has submitted claims with thembefore and therefore already received the tax relief they are claiming for.

Other than providing the forms the only work some of these companies do is to cash the payableorder/cheque when it is received.

There seems to be some confusion here over the authority of the 'agent' to receive the repayment.

Having a 64-8 authority on the record is not enough for the refund to be automatically issued to the agent.

Even where a 64-8/64-8 substitute is received and authority is held on the record,it still requires confirmation fromthe taxpayer to advise they want the refundto be issued to the agent. Without that request the refund would be issued to the taxpayer.

Also, you do not have to have an authority on the record in order for the repayment to be issued to your agent or nominee. Simply providing the details of where you want the refund to go is sufficient.This is what is known as a R38 or Bare Nomination. The taxpayer remains in control of this and can at any time prior to the repayment being issued terminate that request and ask to be issued the refund directly.

However, these refund companies have been burned too many times by taxpayers phoning up and cancelling the R38 and then not paying the refund company for the 'work' done.

The refund companies then started to change their forms and rather than just including a Bare Nomination for them to be issued the refund, they started to include a Deed of Assignment,

This guarantees that they receive any refund due aslong as theirs is the only assignment in place.

HMRC_Guidance wrote:

If a taxpayer legally assigns a repayment to a third party by a deed or letter, that third party (the assignee) becomes the person (or company) legally entitled to the repayment. The deed or letter of assignment is legally binding and we have no option but to issue the repayment to the person (or company) to whom it has been assigned.


The assignment can only be revoked if both the taxpayer who made the assignment and the person to whom the repayment was assigned both agree to it being revoked. The agreement to revoke the assignment must be in writing and signed by both parties before being sent to HMRC. Note: An Agent cannot revoke an assignment on his client’s behalf. Both parties to the assignment must sign an agreement to revoke the assignment otherwise it must be returned and the appropriate signatures requested.

However, an assignment is only valid if:

HMRC_Guidance wrote:

An assignment may be made by either a deed or letter and in both cases in order to be valid must meet the following criteria

• It must be absolute, that is it must transfer the right to the repayment from the taxpayer to the assignee unconditionally
• It must contain a written signature made by the taxpayer entitled to the repayment (‘wet’, scanned, photocopied and faxed signatures are all acceptable)
• The actual assignment must be submitted to HMRC (telephone call reporting it's existence or photocopy will not suffice)

The Deed/R38 shouold form it'sown section within the claim form.It must state that the payment is assigned UNCONDITIONALLY, and the signature should be the last part ofg the section,i.e.there can be no further terms/conditions noted after the signature box.

As well as those criteria above the way the forms are set out is specific. The claim form itself cannot contain the main terms and conditions of the agreementwithin the actual claim, deed of assignment, 3rd party authority. The T&C can formpart of the document, but should be on a seperate sheet/page

HMRC produced new guidelines and specifications fromAugust 2015 which laid down how these companies must set out their claim forms,what must be included, what must not be included, etc etc

Any terms that are included within the claim document must contain a paragraph confirming HMRC are not aware of and do not condone the T&C's, and theymust also not be contained within the Deed/R38 signature section.

Also, the assignment CANNOT include future years, that includes the current tax year as the tax is not deemed paid until after 5 April of the year in question. So as it stands at todays date an assignment can only assign the repayment to the assignee for the tax years 2011/12, 2012/13, 2013/14 and 2014/15.

Any assignments that do not conform to the relevant specifications, or which include future years are rejected and returned to the agent, and the claim is not processed.

Unfortunately once you have assigned a year or a number of years to these companies, then unless you can get them to agree to revoke the assignment, that company effectively owns any tax refund/relief due for those years, but only those years. The assignment is not a continuing arrangement.

Having a Deed of Assignment in place is NOT the same thing as giving authority for that company to act on the taxpayers behalf.

Unless the refund company submits a 64-8, 64-8 substitute or provides a signed restricted authority additionally or included within the claim form, then they do not have the ability to call/write to HMRC and request information/ask about the claim etc.

You can only have 1 Deed of Assignment for each year. If you were to submit an assignment to one company and claim a tax refund of tax you had overpaid, then the refund would be issued to the assignee

If you were then to sign another assignment with another company to claim tax relief on expenses that you had forgotten in the original claim, and the claim included a year(s) that were included in the original assignment (which had not been revoked), then the original assignment would take precedent for those years which were originally assigned tothem, and the original company would receive the repayment for those years. The new company would only receive repayments due which have not been assigned previously.

We see this issue alot as people just fill in these claim forms without thinking, even if they have had the refund/relief due previously. I've seen cases where a person has filled in 4 or 5 of these claim forms within a 6month period assigning each one to a different claims company, and most of the time they are claiming for exactly the same tax relief in each claim (uniform laundry expenses). Not only is it a waste of the taxpayers time, it's a waste of HMRC resources having to deal with multiple claims for the same expenses from the same person. Whilst the refund company has no associated costs,they just wait for the money to roll in.