Tax rebate

Huntier

Asking on behalf of a friend:
My friend is homeless and had been told he is due a tax rebate but he has no fixed address hmrc cannot send the cheque to him so they have told him they have sent it to his banks 'account holding department' for it to be credited into his account. It hasn't been paid into his account as of yet, as far as hmrc are concerned they have sent the cheque, my friend has contacted the bank to see where the cheque is but they are unaware of any account holding depart but the hmrc can't disclose the address of where they sent the cheque to. Anyone know what the process is here and where the cheque would be??

xylophone

HMRC have sent it to "his" bank's holding department.

Your friend gave HMRC details of his bank account?

If so, HMRC should have sent it to that bank? Where else could they have sent it?

Try PM to dori2o who knows a lot about HMRC?

https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/5444995 2

agrinnall

It could be that what HMRC said was that they would send it to your friend's "account holding branch", so in the first instance I would suggest he contacts the branch directly rather than ringing a call centre.

Wouldn't it have been easier in the first place for the cheque to have been sent to him care of you?

Huntier

When he called his bank they were unaware of a 'holding department'.
I thought that it could have gone to his account holding branch too but the bank don't have a direct number for his branch and he hasn't been able to go there today.
Thanks for your replies

agrinnall

What bank is it? Having worked in banking in the past for over 20 years I've also never heard of an account holding department, which is why I suggested branch, but it's possible that a bank that doesn't have branch-based sortcodes, such as Nationwide, might have such a department.

dori2o

Almost all banks now forward any cheque payments received in local branches to a central processing centre to be cashed and allocated to the persons bank account. It is very rare for a local branch to process a cheque and allocate the funds to the recipients account. This is part of the reason why cheque payments still require a 'waiting/handling' period before the payment is allocated to your account (usually arround 10 working days).

HMRC have a tool that contains the addresses of these processing centres and they can be indentified based on the sort code/IBAN of the account where the payment is being paid to, so even if the taxpayer provides only their local branch address, HMRC can forward the payment direct to the processing centre. This saves time as it cuts out the time taken for the local branch to send the cheque on to the processing centre.

Try speaking to the bank again and asking if the cheque payment can be traced within the processing centre?

If they still claim they know nothing then you can ask HMRC to re-issue the payment. This process can take upto 6 weeks as the cheque has to be cancelled and then the system checked to see if it has been cashed. This is all done by the banks and not HMRC.

Regarding your friends address, he does not have to have his ownb personal fixed address for HMRC to issue him with a repayment. He can use an official registered Care Of address, a PO Box if he wishes, or simply a friend/family members address without the C/o.

Finally HMRC can provide details of where the cheque has been issued but only in writing.