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Claiming an old Tax refund. Help please?
Mr_Scatterbrain
Posts: 2 Newbie
in Cutting tax
Hi all :hello:
Long time browser, first time poster. Here's hoping that someone on here may be able to offer some advise on my current situation. I did do a forum search, but I couldn't find any relevant info, so forgive me if this question has been asked before.
Ok, so my old job from a few years ago meant working away quite a lot and working 70-80 hour weeks, week in-week out. My life was chaotic. I even worked on my wedding day, much to my dear wifes displeasure.
Sometime during this period of chaos, I received three cheques from HMRC for overpaid income tax. One for a few pence short of £180, one for a bit over £1000, and one for around £2500. These cheques got filed in my 'to do pile' for me to pay in at the bank when I had a spare 30 minutes. That spare 30 minutes never arrived. The cheques got forgotten about. Then my wife, trying to be helpful, tidied up my desk and threw a load of stuff out. Included in which was two of the larger cheques, totalling around £3500-£3750, leaving just the cheque for £180.
I phoned HMRC the other week to explain the situation and they suggested sending off the one cheque that I did still have, along with my NI number, DOB, old addresses and old places of employment. I recieved a phonecall yesterday from HMRC to inform me that they could only refund the one cheque of £180, but couldn't do anything about the other two cheques, (totalling around £3500+), as they couldn't tell from their own records what years these cheques came from.
I'd assumed, what with HMRC being the slick, highly professional, governmental department that it is, would have simply keyed my details into their 'supercomputer', brought up my tax records and would have quickly been able to work out how much tax I had overpaid, thus sending me a cheque for the balance? Upon reflection, it was very naive of me to expect a government department to be managed to the same sort of levels of professionalism that they expect taxpaying businesses to be run to. :mad:
So can anyone think of a way to get this resolved? The only answer that I can come up with is to submit a Subject Access Request for my tax records, but how far back can I go, (the cheques are over 6 years old)? Would just one SAR be sufficient, or would I need one SAR for each tax year? If I did have access o my personal tax records, I'm guessing I'd be able to figure quite easily whether or not I overpaid tax for each year, (bearing in mind that I'm not an accountant)?
Does anyone else have any experience of this? Are other options available to me? Or have I, through my own failings, just lost out on £3500-£3750?
In advance, many thanks for your advice :beer:
Long time browser, first time poster. Here's hoping that someone on here may be able to offer some advise on my current situation. I did do a forum search, but I couldn't find any relevant info, so forgive me if this question has been asked before.
Ok, so my old job from a few years ago meant working away quite a lot and working 70-80 hour weeks, week in-week out. My life was chaotic. I even worked on my wedding day, much to my dear wifes displeasure.
Sometime during this period of chaos, I received three cheques from HMRC for overpaid income tax. One for a few pence short of £180, one for a bit over £1000, and one for around £2500. These cheques got filed in my 'to do pile' for me to pay in at the bank when I had a spare 30 minutes. That spare 30 minutes never arrived. The cheques got forgotten about. Then my wife, trying to be helpful, tidied up my desk and threw a load of stuff out. Included in which was two of the larger cheques, totalling around £3500-£3750, leaving just the cheque for £180.
I phoned HMRC the other week to explain the situation and they suggested sending off the one cheque that I did still have, along with my NI number, DOB, old addresses and old places of employment. I recieved a phonecall yesterday from HMRC to inform me that they could only refund the one cheque of £180, but couldn't do anything about the other two cheques, (totalling around £3500+), as they couldn't tell from their own records what years these cheques came from.
I'd assumed, what with HMRC being the slick, highly professional, governmental department that it is, would have simply keyed my details into their 'supercomputer', brought up my tax records and would have quickly been able to work out how much tax I had overpaid, thus sending me a cheque for the balance? Upon reflection, it was very naive of me to expect a government department to be managed to the same sort of levels of professionalism that they expect taxpaying businesses to be run to. :mad:
So can anyone think of a way to get this resolved? The only answer that I can come up with is to submit a Subject Access Request for my tax records, but how far back can I go, (the cheques are over 6 years old)? Would just one SAR be sufficient, or would I need one SAR for each tax year? If I did have access o my personal tax records, I'm guessing I'd be able to figure quite easily whether or not I overpaid tax for each year, (bearing in mind that I'm not an accountant)?
Does anyone else have any experience of this? Are other options available to me? Or have I, through my own failings, just lost out on £3500-£3750?
In advance, many thanks for your advice :beer:
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Comments
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Mr_Scatterbrain wrote: »So can anyone think of a way to get this resolved? The only answer that I can come up with is to submit a Subject Access Request for my tax records, but how far back can I go, (the cheques are over 6 years old)? ...
See here
https://www.whatdotheyknow.com/request/93496/response/236114/attach/html/2/FOI%202646%2011%20M%20McGartland.pdf.html
The former Inland Revenue had a standardised retention period set at up to a maximum of nine years plus the current year. HMRC has reduced this to six years plus current for direct and indirect taxes information.Mr_Scatterbrain wrote: ».. Or have I, through my own failings, just lost out on £3500-£3750?...
Probably.0 -
Why do you think HMRC should have to make an excessive amount of work in order to correct an error that was entirely of your doing? I think your money is lost, treat it as an expensive lesson for the future.0
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Why do you think HMRC should have to make an excessive amount of work in order to correct an error that was entirely of your doing? I think your money is lost, treat it as an expensive lesson for the future.
Well, that's the thing. Based upon my original phonecall to HMRC, I was under the impression that it would be a reasonably straight forward process to have the cheques re-issued. Clearly that isn't the case.
I fully admit that the situation was entirely of my own doing. HMRC issued the cheques, I didn't cash them in. I / my wife, lost two of them. I naively assumed that it would take HMRC two minutes searching of my tax records to see what cheques, and to what value, hadn't been reimbursed. Clearly this assumption was wrong.
At no point have I tried to blame HMRC for this situation. To a degree, they have been helpfull. But put yourself in my position. Would you right it off, or would you try and find out if there was a way to still claim a tax refund? I'll carry on investigating to see what, if anything I can do about this. £3500 isn't the sort of money I'll be happy to chalk off to experience, although I do admit that my chances are slim at best.0 -
Mr_Scatterbrain wrote: »I naively assumed that it would take HMRC two minutes searching of my tax records to see what cheques, and to what value, hadn't been reimbursed. Clearly this assumption was wrong.
Thing is that your tax record will show the repayments as being paid, as HMRC have issued cheques. So the HMRC call handlers will see all years correctly finalised if they look at each year on their system.
The fact the cheques haven't been cashed is a completely different "back office" role, i.e. their bank reconciliation department. There'll be thousands, if not tens of thousands of cheques that havn't been cashed going back decades. That's a huge task for someone to try to pick out which are yours if you can't give them dates and amounts.0 -
Mr_Scatterbrain wrote: »Well, that's the thing. Based upon my original phonecall to HMRC, I was under the impression that it would be a reasonably straight forward process to have the cheques re-issued. Clearly that isn't the case.
It probably would be if you could tell them details of the cheques. I had to do it when they made a complete mess of issuing a cheque to me, but I did have exact details to give them so that they could easily find the record in their system and cancel the original cheque before issuing the replacement. They can't do that for you so I don't think they will reissue yours.0 -
So...
You worked on your wedding day.
Wife threw away £3k of your money.
Do you believe in coincidence?0
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