Ancient tax return penalty

tonedepear · 23 October 2018 at 1:41PM

Afternoon! Not sure if this is the right place, apologies if not, but I'm wondering if anyone's had experience of this or can suggest what I should be doing, as I've clearly done something wrong somewhere.

Potted history - I've been on PAYE since 2004, before that I was briefly self employed, so did some tax returns, no hassle. I moved house last year, changed my address with the Revenue, all is well.

Then about a year ago, I received three tax returns for the last 3 years. This was unexpected, as I've been PAYE for ages. So I call them, and they say "yes, that is odd, we don't know why you've had them, it just shows they've been triggered by something, but we'll take you back out of self assessment, bit odd, don't worry about it, sorry for the inconvenience.

Then, a week or two later, I got a letter from them saying "you owe us these late penalties for the 2008 tax return which you never sent us which is ten years late. What 2008 tax return, think I? And call them and discuss. Eventually it's established they sent it to an old address, I'd not correctly informed them I moved in 2008, hence I'd not heard anything about it or since, but not to worry, if I don't mind filling a 2008 tax return from my records, I can then appeal the penties and they can all but guarantee that will get squashed and we can all move on. So I did, and they did, and all was happy and bright although it took months of messing and phone calls but was all tidied up by the end of February this year, ish.

And then, roughly in March or April this year, They sent me a letter saying I really do need to crack on and submit this 2014/15 tax return or they'll fine me. So I phone them up, and they say "Oh, sorry Mr Customer, that's been sent before we took you back out of self assessment, it's an error, so don't worry about it, you can just throw it away and don't worry about it." And I said "are you definitely absolutely sure? And they said "Yes! Cool your boots and chillax, mr taxpayer. Go about your business." So I said ok then.

(You can see where this is heading, can't you)

So then in May/June (apologies, the dates are hazy, I had back surgery in January and was a bit all over the place chronologically) I got a bill for £200 for late filing of that tax return, so I phoned them again and they said, "oh, no, you needed to do that one, we can't just cancel it" so more back and forth and eventually I just did the thing, and attached a letter to it appealing the fines because they literally told me not to do it, they have notes to this effect, etc etc, spoke to them, they said that would be fine.

Called them a week later to check they received it. "yes we have, it's showing as received but not processed, but that's fine, we've got it, and we've had your appeal letter as well. All good. Don't worry, although it might actually be a couple of months before you hear from us, so don't worry about it, we'll be in touch."

(yeah, I know, it's obvious isn't it)

So, I call them at the end of August and say "any word on this? Should I be fretting?" "nooooooo, everything's absolutely fine. It does take ages to get through the system, but we've received it, you don't need to worry, all is good and happy and well at HMRC towers and we have little pink hearts next to your name on the system and you're in no trouble at all and everything is definitely absolutely fine, and this appeal will be a walkover as well, cos we misinformed you and it's our fault, so don't worry about that either"

(I'm paraphrasing, but that was the jist)

So, today, I pop home at lunch, and I have a letter from t'revenue, which reads:

We have asked you several times to file your overdue tax return and pay the penalties. Our records show that you still haven't done this.
As previously warned, your failure to file your tax return or contact us means you now owe more penalties.

Please pay what you owe now.

If you don't respond we can send your debt to a collection agency

I've cut some of the bumf out, but yeah.

So I CALL THEM RIGHT NOW, and they say, "oh yeah, it's showing as received but not processed, we can't talk to you about any appeals or anything until it's processed on to the system." I said "i sent it FOUR MONTHS AGO"
"yeah, it's pretty slow"
"but I'm getting threatening debt letters"
"I'll put through a request to speed it up. It'll be fine though, don't worry. Call us back on Friday?"

I have a reasonable (possibly foolish) amount of faith that I'll call them back 3 or 4 more times over the next couple of weeks and eventually this will get sorted, but why haven't they at least called off the hounds? I work in the banking industry and if they took me to court or I got a CCJ or something somehow I will literally lose my job, which would be even more stressful than this is. Should I be complaining to an ombudsman or something? Is there anything I can do other than accept they couldn't find their own !!!!, keep calling them every week or so and cross my fingers it'll get sorted eventually?

It's *quite* stressful tbh.

badmemory · 23 October 2018 at 2:27PM

I think your problem is you are talking to the monkey not the organ grinder. Time to put an actual pen to paper. They are like so many call centres nowadays - tell you anything to get you off the phone.

Pennywise · 23 October 2018 at 2:50PM

I need to liaise with HMRC daily as I'm an accountant in practice. The one thing I never do is rely on anything spoken over the phone. I always send a letter to confirm any phone conversation. But more often than not, I don't even bother with the phone call as my experience is that more often than not, they don't do what they say they will or they say they can't do anything anyway. It's usually just a fobbing off service. 9 times out of 10 I just go straight to sending them a letter, followed up with reminders every 4 weeks until they reply. (Having said all that, I don't contact them re simple/trivial stuff anyway as I usually need to contact them about more complex things which I know the call handlers can't deal with - it's very rare I deal with simply things like tax code changes but when I do, I use the online tax code change service which works far better than speaking to them, again, there's a written record!).

tonedepear · 23 October 2018 at 3:26PM

Perhaps I need to put all this in a letter to follow up then (possibly I'll change the wording slightly). I seem to sporadically get useless people or really clued up helpful people who get stuff sorted. Almost exactly 50/50.