Ticked wrong box on P46

Hazel1986

I started a new job in October 2009 as an agency worker, working for an external company. For some reason I did not receive a P45 from my previous employer so I had to fill out a P46. I have only just found out that I had ticked the wrong box on the form, which is why I have accumulated an undertax. I had ticked Category A when I was supposed to have ticked Category B.

However, at the time I did not realise I had ticked the wrong box. I rang HMRC at the time to tell them I was not paying any tax but they told me that I was owed back some emergency tax so I did not need to worry. A couple of weeks later, I was still not paying any tax so I rang them again. This was about November time now, but they told me that I was owed a lot of emergency tax back and not to ring back until the New Year. I rang back in the New Year and I was told that they had never received my P45. I rang my previous employer and they sent me a Statement of Income which I immediately sent to HMRC. When I rang them over a week later to confirm if they had received my Statement of Income they said that they had but could not deal with it for another 2 months as they had a massive back log. I have recently found out that it was at this point I was put on emergency tax. In the new financial year in 2010 I received a letter to tell me that they would put me on a new tax code so I could pay back what I owed. I believed at this point I was paying back tax I owed.

It was not until December 2011, when I got a rather massive shock in my monthly wages that I had been taxed £600 (the amount of my undertax). Apparently my recruitment agency were not using the correct tax code. I was never informed of this and did not realise it was a problem. My HR department recalculated my wages for this month but I was told by HMRC that I still needed to pay the undertax back.

After this point I received no letters/phonecalls etc from HMRC and I did not know where I stood, even at the new financial year, I still received no letters about my undertax. I decided to ring up in June 2012 to clear it up and I was told that I had an overpayment of tax in 2010/2011 and in 2011/2012 so they had deducted this from my undertax which meant I now owed £438.00. I decided to try and appeal against the undertax ruling under the ESC A19 as I felt that they had failed to make use of the facts that they had about my income.

I got a letter back saying that they were still of the same opinion that they were not at fault as they felt they had not failed to act on any information they had on record. This was when I was informed about my P46 and the fact that the wrong box was ticked. I rang up my previous employer and they emailed me the form I had sent which showed I had ticked Category A by mistake.

I am aware that ticking the wrong box was my fault, but I'm quite frankly annoyed that it has taken nearly 3 years to find this out. My question is therefore simply, do I have any other grounds of appeal? Can I still appeal under ESC A19 or something else? I feel I have been dealt with appallingly, especially since it took them 3 months to figure out there was a problem with my tax initially in the first place!