HMRC Verify Gateway Tax Return

ZZaffy

Over the past few years, I have used Gateway online but this system has now ended.  There is a choice of Verify or HMRC.  Does anyone have info on what is the best online product to use.  Thank you.

antonic

To verify your identity to HMRC via the HMRC system you need to have a valid UK Passport and photo id driving licence.
To use verify it will ask a whole series of questions about bank accounts etc.
As HMRC ask less questions, if you have a valid UK passport and photo id driving licence use that.

ZZaffy

I have just seen your post, so thank you.  I seem not to get email notifications.  Maybe a setting is wrong. 
I will use HMRC.  

akwexavante

After 20yrs of submitting self assessments online i'm now being asked to verify my identity !!!!  Why!?

I'm offered only two methods by which to submit ID Verification, UK Passport and a Credit Check.   Do i need to pass both?

I don't have nor do i want a passport, i won't be using it. 

Can i get a passport then send it back for a refund? Or will i need it again next year?

My Credit Check failed !  I tried GOV.UK Verify via the Post Office which succeeded but i still couldn't login to HMRC without having to verify my ID !?   I have discovered that you then need to login to your Post Office Account first then from within your Post Office Account click on a link to be redirected to HMRC and then login to HMRC.   This works, but a pain in the A~#@!  and how ridiculously stupid.

BUT ............... You can't login in this way if you think you may have Capital Gains Tax to pay.

In addition, i checked my details with Experian. I checked my details held by the Post Office too and all's well.  So why am i failing HMRC's Credit Check?     I have discovered that they are using a company called TransUnion (I've never heard of them either) so i visited their website and registered and passed!!!!! Now looking at the info they hold about me i find a catalogue of errors including the presence of a middle name i've never had (Where on earth has that come from?)  the info is also at least 6 months old and the reason why a Credit Check Failed.

It's ridiculous to think that when i login to HMRC now and verify my ID i may have to Lie about who i am !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!  I may have to enter a middle name i don't have and lie about when i last opened a bank account and who i'm with for my mobile phone contract etc.   Not tried this but will be doing so tomorrow.  I'll login to my TransUnion account first to familiarize myself with the wrong answers (sorry correct answers) to HMRC's questions before i do so.

Is everybody going to have to do this every year or just the once?

ZZaffy

Sympathies, I don't have a passport too.  So far, I am getting away with my driver's licence for ID, including for money laundering checks when selling house.  

akwexavante

Interesting, i have a modern Photo Drivers Licence but i'm not given this as a choice.  HMRC Verify say there are six (I think it was six) ways to validate your ID.  YOU CANNOT choose which ones are offered to you until after you click start then you are presented with a list of choices.  I was only offered two options and you have to choose two.   In my case i have to have a passport and complete a credit check.   Not sure at the mo for certain if you have to pass both or just one of them.  Now that i know what the wrong answers are (Correct Answers which are wrong!) i will try again tomorrow when i have more time.

[Deleted User]

We have this problem in NI, particularly since Brexit. As we have dual citizenship many now opt to have an Irish passport which is not accepted by the registration process. The alternative was to provide other information such as the amount of NI or tax paid in a particular tax year - it worked fine in the case of my wife.

RadioGaGa_2

Martin Lewis, this needs to be a feature in one of your broadcasts!!
I too have spent many hours and recent days trying to get identity validification via this CGT 'Beta' Government Gateway site, part of the HMRC .gov.uk website.

As akwexavante accurately states, I too was only offered 2 choices, the Passport details (easy) and the dreaded Credit Check.

You answer their inane questions accurately, but get told you have not answered correctly. So you try again, and again, and again???? No time up, you get 4 ( I think) attempts then you are blocked out for 24 hours no less!
You call them, and wait and wait and wait for an adviser, personally on one call I got a guy who admitted he didn't know much about the CGT declaration part of the website, as I started to explain the problem he disconnected me having waited nearly an hour to get through.

Eventually, like akwexavante, I looked into this TransGlobal Union (TGU) Credit reference 'service' and signed up for my own credit reference search so that I could state EXACTLY what they held in my answers to HMRC.
WRONG ! I failed siging up to TGU. So tried a number of answer combinations of sign up to TGU, to eventually find that if I lied about the "When did you take out a new credit card" question and instead of declaring the truth that I had held a new card for the past three months from my bank, the old one was over 6 years old, BOOM, I'm in, only to find that their information is clearly out of date.

Not acceptable at all for a Governmental run authoirty like HMRC

So back to HMRC, 'lying' about my new credit card, stating I hadn't taken one out for over 6 years and BOOM I now have a Government Gateway account.

Not that I didn't have one before, I filed SA Tax Returns online for years.

Further to this, during the process of making a CGT submission, at the end HMRC state your payment reference code.
Click, as I did, to pay this from your bank by transfer and you get a second entirely different code to quote on your bank transfer reference. Which one should I use I wonder?? A serious sum of money, I certainly don't want this disapearing into the HMRC ether?

A total shambles, pretty much dysfunctional, no one available to really help apart from one adviser in Manchester who gave up with me on day three, suggesting he would have to send a paper form for me to complete as I couldn't verify my identity online, but this would take 2 - three weeks to process, and my subesequesnt payment would take further days to process so that would take me beyond the 30 day limit now inforced for CGT payments on property disposal completion date, especially over Christmas New Year?

Put covid into the mix and I would surely be looking at a late filing penalty plus interest.
But no worry said my Manchester adviser, he's put a comment on my account to state I was having technical difficulties and I could then action a dispute claim.

Oh the sheer bureaucracy of it all?
And all I ever wanted to do was pay the Governemnt money I owed as promptly as I possibly could.

No wonder this country is in such a huge mess, Lord help us when we are through Brexit.

unholyangel

RadioGaGa_2 said:

Not acceptable at all for a Governmental run authoirty like HMRC

Government gateway isn't run by HMRC. Could be why they couldn't help you. Nor do they (or the government) control what information a third party credit reference agency holds on you. 

akwexavante

I tried so many times, and i had to contact HMRC after being locked out 3 times in a row to get my account manually unlocked.  In the end i had to buy a new passport costing me £75.  I don't need a passport and have no intentions of travelling.

Using my passport i did get logged into my HMRC account, i'm late paying capital gains tax so i've been fined £100 which i'm appealing against.  Self Assessment submitted too just in time.

HOW DO I SEND MY PASSPORT BACK FOR A REFUND,,,,,,, anybody?

I wonder what's going to happen this next few weeks as the online submission deadline approaches, so many people are going to fall foul of this ID Verification process and won't have time to get a passport or work out for themselves what their right wrong answers are to the questions asked of them!!!!!

RadioGaGa_2

unholyangel
"Government gateway isn't run by HMRC. Could be why they couldn't help you. Nor do they (or the government) control what information a third party credit reference agency holds on you."

It was only one of several advisers who cut me off having stated he wasn't up to speed with "the new CGT Gateway identity validation" other HMRC advisers certainly did know about it.

HMRC adviser in Manchester was very helpful and quite irritated by the fact that having walked me through the entire process over the phone the system was not capable of accepting my identity validation.

Of course the Government cannot control credit reference checking companies, but you'd think they would choose one that at least has personal records up-to-date before choosing to ask date-sensitive multi-answer questions.

It's totally absurd and puts significant stress and worry on the many documented having major problems with this issue. Wether run by the Governemnt of not, HMRC choose to use these methods they should therefore take some responsibility in the quality and accuracy of their checks, instead of law abiding and willing tax payers having to technically lie to get through the hoops. It's utterly ludicrous.