do tax refunds really take 6 weeks?

Saint71

Hi first time poster. I was advised that I was due a tax refund because I left my job to become a full-time student in 2014.

WhenI spoke to HMRC they told me that they'd issued a cheque in July 2015 and sent it to my old address. (hence I hadn't received it)

They have cancelled the old cheque and are reissuing one but have told me it will take up to 6 weeks.

Does anyone have experience of this and will it really take 6 weeks to have a new cheque written?

agrinnall

Probably, you'll be in a queue to be dealt with along with the millions of tax returns that they'll have received at the last minute. You've been without the money for 6 months, why is another 6 weeks so much of an issue? Why didn't you chase it up sooner?

dori2o

To answer the question posed in the title of this thread in a very simple manner.... NO.

It generaly doesn‘t take 6 weeks unless there is a problem.

The 6 weeks timescale allows for time for HMRC to trace the payment, to request a copy of the cheque if it has been cashed, to request autority to re-issue the payment etc etc. Much of which includes dialogue with 3rd party organisations, i.e. banks.

The 6 week timescale is the point at which the customer/taxpayer should call back if they have not heard anything.

Generally for a refund that for whatever eason hasn‘t been received and hasn‘t been cashed it will be re-issued in a much quicker timeframe.

chrismac1

In practice the answer is very much YES, and often much longer. Dori2o quoted the theory. In practice in my view HMRC practice deliberate slow pay, one of the methods used is to have processes with numerous steps and hoops to jump through for simple transactions, such as replacing a cheque they have stopped for example.

CIS refunds routinely take more than a year, despite repeated promises of improvement from HMRC top brass. PAYE refunds often over a year. VAT refunds often 3 months or more. Self-assessment generally quicker but usually at least 4 weeks.

Pennywise

In theory, less than six weeks, but in practice, could be months. A client of mine has just received a small tax repayment of around £100 resulting from a tax return submitted last May. That tax return had no complications at all, very similar to prior years and there's a history of tax repayments over many years of that similar kind of money, basically tax repayment of tax charged on bank interest, so different bank account and nothing else whatsoever that could trigger further investigations, so basically no logic nor reason why it took so many months.

The other thing is that there's a time delay between HMRC issuing the refund (date on their system) and the refund actually being made. This week, we're receiving repayment notices and cheques dated early January, but only just received this week, four weeks after they were supposedly "issued" by HMRC. So HMRC systems show repaid a month ago, but in reality, it's now.

chrismac1

The HMRC postal system is similar. Today is February 10th. It would be by no means unusual for me to receive letters from HMRC dated 10 January or earlier. HMRC performance statistics are measured from when they date their letters, so minimal resource is then put into the bit where the letters go into an envelope and then into the post.

This can of course matter greatly in time-critical situations, such as where you the taxpayer are given 31 days from the date of the letter to respond under penalty for failing to do so.

I am posting this so that people who find themselves in this situation realise that it is not that unusual. Tax tribunal people know it is not unusual, so even if HMRC carry on insisting the fine is valid you can appeal it in confidence.