Rebate - incorrect account number

JoeWebber

When I submitted my wife's tax return I unknowingly entered one digit of our building society account number incorrectly.
Later we got notification of her tax rebate. When it didn't arrive I checked my copy of the tax return, realised the problem and phoned HMRC. In due course the rebate arrived.
I have now received a demand for tax on my account. Since I had already paid my tax I queried this and was told that my wife's rebate had been taken out of my tax account. I did not understand this during the phone conversation and he said he would send a statement letter.
I await that letter but I now believe that what has happened is that HMRC have not recovered the misdirected rebate from the other building society account and have therefore taken it from my tax account.
I accept that it was my error but do I have any recourse? I do not know what steps HMRC have taken to recover the money from the incorrect building society account.
Any help or pointers would be appreciated.
I thought I would get more useful answers here than from HMRC!

Dazed_and_confused

This all sounds a bit odd. Did you give permission to HMRC for them to take some of your tax money to pay your wife?

Presumably this now means you are also going to be hit with an interest charge because you haven't paid your own tax on time :eek:

agrinnall

I would wait for the letter and if it's not clear tell us what it says, as I very much doubt if HMRC could take money from your account to offset an overpayment to your wife. I suspect that either you or the person you spoke to at HMRC have misunderstood what has happened.

xylophone

This does sound very strange.

Your wife was expecting a tax rebate and when it didn't arrive, you checked your copy of her SA form and discovered that you had input an incorrect account number.

You advised HMRC of your error and of the correct number and because a rebate subsequently arrived in her/your joint account, you assumed that either you had reached HMRC before they had actually made any payment to the incorrect account or that they had been able to recall the payment or that there was no such account and the building society had returned the payment?

You now think that HMRC did make a payment to the incorrect account, have been unable to recover it and so have removed the amount from your tax account and paid it to your wife?

You are now expected to repay HMRC?

JoeWebber

Thanks for your replies.
Dazed and confused No, I did not give permission and yes, I am being hit with interest charges plus threats of bailiffs!
agrinnall I will wait for the statement letter. It is an indication of the confusion surrounding this that the letter is being sent to my wife while I am being chased for arrears!
xylophone A lot of time elapsed before I discovered my error so I assume that either option 2 or 3 applies (but I don't know how to find out which). The problem is that, instead of sending an explanatory letter, they have sent one of their boilerplate threatening ones.

xylophone

Do you want to try a PM to dori2o?

https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/5461028

post 6

JoeWebber

Many thanks. I'll follow it up.

JoeWebber

The statements arrived for both of us today and HMRC did indeed subtract my wife's misdirected rebate from my tax account, leaving me with the tax demand.
My building society confirmed that the cheque was paid into the other account and told me that the normal procedure was for HMRC to get their bank to put a tracer on the cheque.
I have now written to HMRC complaining about the former and asking if they have done the latter (if not why not; if they have and the account holder has not paid up, what recourse is there).

dori2o

JoeWebber wrote: »

The statements arrived for both of us today and HMRC did indeed subtract my wife's misdirected rebate from my tax account, leaving me with the tax demand.
My building society confirmed that the cheque was paid into the other account and told me that the normal procedure was for HMRC to get their bank to put a tracer on the cheque.
I have now written to HMRC complaining about the former and asking if they have done the latter (if not why not; if they have and the account holder has not paid up, what recourse is there).

I find it very hard to believe that HMRC would access another taxpayers record without permission to take money. It would be a breach certainly of the DPA as each taxpayer is treated as an individual, even where they are married. They do not have the authority to enter a spouses account and recover funds.

No matter what your thoughts or experiences with HMRC, it is one of the core principles that you do not access a record unless you have a business need to do so, and certainly you do not transfer funds from one account to another without permission.

If what you say is correct then I suggest you immediately submit a complaint, follow the guidnce here https://www.gov.uk/guidance/complain-to-hm-revenue-and-customs

Is it not possible that when you have made the payments to HMRC you have simply sent it/them using the wrong/same UTR number as the reference in error, henceforth paid your tax bill onto your wifes account in error or vis-a-vis?

Unless you tell HMRC that the payment has not been received into your wifes account then they won't know the payment has been allocated to the wrong account.

Secondly, as this is a Self Assessment repayment being issued to a bank it will be via BACS, not a cheque issued to the bank.

As this is a BACS payment it's quite uncommon for the bank to accept the payment if the name on the account does not match the account number/sort code. I would be asking the bank what they have done to investigate this matter regarding the flaws in their processes.

If you knew the account number submitted on your tax returns was incorrect then you should have asked HMRC to cancel the payment and re-issue.

If the payment has been accepted by the bank in error, which it seems is the case, then HMRC will refund the intended recipient and will deal with recovery of the original funds internally. Generally in these cases the receiving bank refunds the payment to HMRC on request and then deals with their customer regarding the incorrect credit allocated to that persons account.

sheramber

There is no link between the two SA records so HMRC could only access your record if you gave them your UTR.

It might make things clearer if you gave a copy of the payment and repayment details shown on each statement