Late tax self-assessment fine with no tax owed

I_Davidson

Hi
Wonder if anyone can help
Very worried about situation my daughter finds self in
Partner had submitted previous tax self-assessment for part time self-employment online and assumed it had gone through, however it seems it hadn't due to technical issues, though they were not aware of this
Due to very low level of earnings from self-employment there was no tax to pay
Months later they have received contact from a company called Drysden Fairfax solicitors (debt collectors) stating they owe the sum of £1,2000 and threatening further action if this is not paid by Monday 29th february
It seems the sum of £10 a day in fines has been building over months
HMRC have said it has been passed on to Drysden Fairfax who have been harassing with calls
They are a young family with very little money and daughter is worried this company will send someone to their home to try and seize goods
Can anyone give advice - there has been no avoidance of providing details and no tax was due in assessment, and information has been provided to HMRC about what seems to have been errors with their system but they are still in this awful position

Karonher

Do you know when it was for, as the deadline for the last one was only the end of January?

If it was a previous year, maybe they could ask when notification was sent out. When mine was late one year I was notified within weeks.

It may also be best to post this in another part of the forum as this is the diaries link. Sorry but I dont know how you can do that.

cte1111

Has your daughter's partner been receiving letters from HMRC chasing up the late tax return. If not, then I think it might be possible to get the fines reversed, as long as HMRC had the correct current contact details.

If I were them, I would write a letter to HMRC setting out all the facts, as you've presented them above, with evidence as much as possible. So if he has anything to show that he did try to submit his tax return on a particular date, then that would be very useful.

Ensure that they include all relevant information, in particular highlighting that they didn't know anything about it until the 'debt' was passed on. If the person involved genuinely thought they had submitted their tax return and has had no correspondence since to indicate anything to the contrary, then there is every possibility that the fines will be retracted. However it is very likely that this will take HMRC a long time to sort out. In the meantime, don't acknowledge any debt to the third party.

I'm an accountant and had a similar problem when dealing with my late father's tax. When he died I made sure that HMRC knew that he had died and that I was to be contacted if they needed any further information. Some months later, I discovered that they had been writing to his old address and fining him endlessly for not submitting a tax return. He would have had no need to do this for many years but must not have told them, so they decided to fine him, after his death. They knew he was dead (they were writing to 'the estate of' but not to my address, so I didn't know until someone sent on the letters.

I wrote to explain the full circumstance and eventually all the fines were removed. As it is out of the common, it takes them ages to deal with. However they can be fair in the end, although I'm sure it doesn't always seem like that.

Darksparkle

Given the amount of penalties I would have to assume this is for the 2013/14 tax year?

There should have been multiple notifications about this.

What was the technical issue? Is he sure there was one? There have been a few people on here before that have said they thought they completed the return but didn't actually press submit.

The fact that no tax is due won't be enough of a reason to appeal (if even still within time). However what caused the technical issue and what contact there has/hasn't been since might.