Please help £2000 fine for Late SA

hixxy02

Hi everybody I'm looking for some advice on a Self Assessment issues i have been having with HMRC for the last few years.

Back in 2007 I was self employed for just 3 months for a job that I was required to be self employed for. I Completed my self assessment for 07/08 period as needed and instructed an accounting firm in London to help me with this. I instructed them at the time that I was no longer self employed and I was told they would inform HMRC. A year later I received another self assessment for the period of 08/09 I contact the accounting company I had used previously and they instructed me that to ignore it and they would confirm with HMRC that I had not been self employed or been earning any income for that period. This happened the year after as well. I contacted HMRC myself and according to there system everything was up to date and they were unsure why I had received this self assessment. So it went into the bin.

Last year I received another letter from them saying i owed £2000 in late filling fees and that they would be taking it out of my wages via my tax code. I called HMRC and managed to speak with someone who actually knows what she is on about. It took her a good half hour to dig everything out on my file but in the end she said she would send me the missing self assessments to fill in and advised me to return them with a letter explaining why i had not returned them for the previous years. I did this in November last year. In February I had a voice mail from HMRC to call them, so i did the next morning - I was told that my account was showing as Zero and that there was no sign of any fines or later payments on it. I actually thought this was the end of it until in March I received details of my new Tax code which indeed included the £2000 fine which I had been told was not on my account. I called them again and was told it WAS on my account and that i needed to send an appeal letter in saying why they were late....Which I have already done.
I then went to Citizens advice and the guy there called HMRC on my behalf. Firstly he was told that they only recieved have 2 self assessments not the 3 I had sent in. I informed him that all 3 and the letter of appeal where sent in the same envelope. 20 mins later the Hmrc lady found them. We were told that it had gone to an appeal and I would hear their decision by the end of April.

Im sick of being told 1 thing by 1 adviser to then be told something different by another. No body seems to know what is happening. it seems there is a failing on HMRC acting on the information they are given and have not kept me informed of the situation. I feel as tho I'm being kept in the dark and brushed away with just having to except I have to pay for there admin errors.

Does anybody know what my options are to finally getting this dealt with sooner rather than later as with my new tax code my down by £200 a month.


Thank you in advance.

agrinnall

It's now past the end of April, did you hear the decision of your appeal?

hixxy02

Hi Agrinnall,

Nope I have heard nothing at all from Hmrc.

Only from my boss who informed me that my Tax code had changed and the new one is terrible.