Interest details on HMRC Personal Tax Account. Updated to include how to access interest details.

youngretired

With my husband and dad's experience with their online accounts, the old accounts that were closed in previous years did count towards the figures given for 18/19 and estimates 19/20, even though they had advised HMRC of the closures. Earlier in the year both of their accounts were correctly amended when they advised HMRC of account closures/interest, but then in August my dad's was changed to include all the closed accounts again so claiming over £200 tax that isn't due.

My husband finally got his response from his complaint the other day and was told that the closed accounts still showed because HMRC had only closed the accounts for the tax year that the accounts were closed in and not the following years where they had been incorrectly carried over. His online account now matches what he provided and his 18/19 tax is also now correct.

I am speaking to HMRC today for my dad, but they did ring him last week in regards to his complaint and said for me to ring the complaint handler today. HMRC did explain that their system was designed before the Savings Tax allowance came in and that the system cannot cope.

talexuser

youngretired wrote: »

HMRC did explain that their system was designed before the Savings Tax allowance came in and that the system cannot cope.

This is just fine from the government that preaches efficiency and value for money for taxpayers, that companies that don't invest to keep up deserve to go to the wall and be replaced by more successful competitors.

soulsaver

I have just gathered my 18/19 interest data & reconciled it with the HMRC estimate detail figures for 19/20.

I haven't bothered with the rats tail of small stuff.

For me what it has recorded looks surprisingly accurate, after I've gotten to the bottom of things like OneBank (who?) turns out to be Kent Reliance owners.

But their 19/20 total estimate was significantly lower than my actual for 18/19; they appear to be missing a couple of banks returns in the estimate.

However, when I add the missing accounts interest to their total 19/20 estimate it works out near enough spot on to the 18/19 summary.

As long as they get the preceding year right, I'm not too bothered about current year estimate because... it's an estimate which'll get adjusted by banks returns after April 2020.

Maybe some of the above may help some identify why the HMRC figs may seem tosh?

polymaff

A verdict has been handed down by a First Tier Tax Tribunal in a case which might have some relevance to this thread, and especially to the above.

A Tax-payer used his P60 to make a tax return. The P60 was wrong in that it under-declared his income. HMRC applied penalties and the taxpayer took the issue to a tribunal.

The FTT decision went against the tax-payer on the matter of penalties. The core issue was whether the tax-payer had been careless when filing his return.

The law defines ‘careless’ as a failure to take reasonable care. The FTT noted that reasonable care “can be best defined as the behaviour which is that of a prudent and reasonable person in the position of the person in question.”

The taxpayer, who did not attend the hearing and was not represented, argued in his letter to HMRC that “it is clearly not my fault that I am in this situation”.

The tax-payer maintained he was not careless in his actions and had queried his P60 with his employer when he noticed the stated pay was low but was told that the P60 was correct.

HMRC, on the other hand, argued that the matter of the P60 was not the cause of the penalty, as it was not the taxpayer’s responsibility to issue the P60. Rather, HMRC had levied its penalty as it considered that tax-payer had failed to take reasonable care to include all his employment-related figures on his return and so had acted carelessly.

HMRC further argued that the tax-payer must have known what his true income was, as it was a simple matter of adding together his payslips and that he could have contacted a tax adviser for assistance, but did not.

Confirming that if you receive dodgy data (perhaps, even, from HMRC...:)) and submit it, it will be you who gets nicked.


EDIT: Note a paradox? The tax-payer shouldn't have relied upon his employer's dodgy P60 but on his employer's Payslips. Errr.

badger09

youngretired wrote: »

With my husband and dad's experience with their online accounts, the old accounts that were closed in previous years did count towards the figures given for 18/19 and estimates 19/20, even though they had advised HMRC of the closures. Earlier in the year both of their accounts were correctly amended when they advised HMRC of account closures/interest, but then in August my dad's was changed to include all the closed accounts again so claiming over £200 tax that isn't due.

My husband finally got his response from his complaint the other day and was told that the closed accounts still showed because HMRC had only closed the accounts for the tax year that the accounts were closed in and not the following years where they had been incorrectly carried over. His online account now matches what he provided and his 18/19 tax is also now correct.

I am speaking to HMRC today for my dad, but they did ring him last week in regards to his complaint and said for me to ring the complaint handler today. HMRC did explain that their system was designed before the Savings Tax allowance came in and that the system cannot cope.

Now all I can hear is "So that's all good then":cool: (Hugh Bonneville in WW1A)

Thanks for this though. I've had the same experience regarding subsequent inaccurate 'correcting' of already correct figures, resulting is mythical underpayments when I have in fact overpaid.

I'm awaiting HMRC response to my latest detailed schedule sent 18 October. I'll be out of UK for several weeks but if its not corrected by the time I get back, my next step is a formal complaint.

May I ask how long HMRC took to provide a substantive response, rather than a holding one, to your dad's & husband's complaints?

eskbanker

polymaff wrote: »

A verdict has been handed down by a First Tier Tax Tribunal in a case which might have some relevance to this thread, and especially to the above.

A Tax-payer used his P60 to make a tax return. The P60 was wrong in that it under-declared his income. HMRC applied penalties and the taxpayer took the issue to a tribunal.

The FTT decision went against the tax-payer on the matter of penalties. The core issue was whether the tax-payer had been careless when filing his return.

The law defines ‘careless’ as a failure to take reasonable care. The FTT noted that reasonable care “can be best defined as the behaviour which is that of a prudent and reasonable person in the position of the person in question.”

The taxpayer, who did not attend the hearing and was not represented, argued in his letter to HMRC that “it is clearly not my fault that I am in this situation”.

The tax-payer maintained he was not careless in his actions and had queried his P60 with his employer when he noticed the stated pay was low but was told that the P60 was correct.

HMRC, on the other hand, argued that the matter of the P60 was not the cause of the penalty, as it was not the taxpayer’s responsibility to issue the P60. Rather, HMRC had levied its penalty as it considered that tax-payer had failed to take reasonable care to include all his employment-related figures on his return and so had acted carelessly.

HMRC further argued that the tax-payer must have known what his true income was, as it was a simple matter of adding together his payslips and that he could have contacted a tax adviser for assistance, but did not.

Confirming that if you receive dodgy data (perhaps, even, from HMRC...:)) and submit it, it will be you who gets nicked.


EDIT: Note a paradox? The tax-payer shouldn't have relied upon his employer's dodgy P60 but on his employer's Payslips. Errr.

My curiosity led me to look for, and find, the documentation of the decision at http://financeandtax.decisions.tribunals.gov.uk/judgmentfiles/j11055/TC07091.pdf

I was wondering what the materiality of the variance was, and see that the P60 figure of £168K was only just over half of the £307K actual taxable earnings (plus £6.7K of benefits), so there's definitely a credibility issue with the smaller one, but the issue seemed to arise from the employer changing payroll providers mid-year and therefore issuing a P45 covering the first period and a P60 for the second, with different PAYE references.

The employee claims not to have received the P45 and so only submitted his return based on the P60 that covered the second part of the tax year, effectively pleading ignorance on the basis of being a foreign national unfamiliar with the UK tax system.

On your final point about the paradox, as far as I can see there was nothing dodgy about the numbers on the P60 as such, but they only represented a partial year and should have been used in conjunction with the earlier P45 figures. Obviously the actual pay received should provide something against which to reconcile the apparently inconsistent figures supplied by the employer, so (as HMRC observe) realistically it wouldn't have taken much effort to establish the full picture....

jamei305

The PAYE system in this country is a joke. It works fine for people earning the same amount every month with perhaps an annual payrise, but anything outside that just plunges HMRC and the taxpayer into a costly sea of bureaucracy .

For example I spent half an hour today working out why HMRC sent me a letter demanding £349 which I have to pay now and that they will have to refund me at the end of the tax year. It turned out to be because last month I told them the total I would be earning for the rest of this tax year, rather than telling them at the end of the tax year. If I'd done the latter I wouldn't have had to pay it and claim it back.

polymaff

eskbanker wrote: »

On your final point about the paradox,

What HMRC should surely have advised was to obtain and rely on evidence of the income coming into his possession.

BTW, and coincidentally, there is another case where a foreign national - maybe of the same country - is trying to escape a speeding charge by claiming that he thought that the 110 sign on a railway running alongside a motorway was a road sign. IIRC he was clocked at well over 110km/hr, maybe over 110 mph...:)

The moral applicable to this thread is that the more you rely on third party information, the more you risk being left carrying the liability. KISS!

eskbanker

polymaff wrote: »

What HMRC should surely have advised was to obtain and rely on evidence of the income coming into his possession.

As far as I can see they weren't offering him any advice other than retrospectively saying what they think he could and should have done!

The reason HMRC issued a penalty was not the inaccurate P60, as it is not your responsibility to issue the P60. However, it is your responsibility to include all of your income in your tax return. You must have known what your income was. It was easy to calculate by adding up the figures on the payslips.

You should have contacted a tax advisor/agent asking for advice or double checked your payslips to calculate the correct employment figures. As you did not do this before submitting your tax return, HMRC considered that you did not take reasonable care to include all of your employment related figures on your return.

polymaff wrote: »

The moral applicable to this thread is that the more you rely on third party information, the more you risk being left carrying the liability.

I'd phrase that as: relying on third party information has never absolved people of personal responsibility!

polymaff

eskbanker wrote: »

I'd phrase that as: relying on third party information has never absolved people of personal responsibility!

That summarises the dilemma faced by this thread's posters.

For some years I have based my SA submissions on payments received and cleared. That saves all the effort of trying to get tax certificates from the institutions and it prevents the errors in such documents landing me in the soup. The only time I use up any energy is in flagging up when an institution is deliberately mis-informing HMRC - only one so far this year.