Removal from self-assessment - not processed and now have late penalty

sixtyfoothigh

My husband was self-employed for years. He's disabled and doing bits of freelance writing was pretty much all he could manage - never earned much (always below the personal allowance). I've always done his self assessment for him, as he find maths a bit of a mystery. Due to the low amounts and low expenses it was never a complicated task. His health has improved a bit and in 2018/19 he was offered part time employment - and he kept up a bit of his freelance work as well. 2018/19 taxes were slightly more complicated as he went over the threshold so did pay tax of the writing. 2019/20 he did look at doing bits of freelance but didn't actually make any money. When I went to complete a tax return we both agreed that he should end his self-employment and just focus on his employed role. I then went to file his self-assessment, but it wouldn't let me file £0 against his self-employment (it said I didn't need to do self-assessment due to the amount), and it kept telling me he didn't need to submit for his PAYE role, and that I should fill in a form to be removed from self-assessment. The removal from self-assessment form was completed before the deadline.

Yesterday we got a letter saying he'd received a penalty for late filing. We spent hours on hold to HRMC and got hung up on once. None of the online advisers were free (tried that for hours as well). In the end I found a form to appeal the penalty which we completed (giving the reference number for the self-assessment form we'd done as evidence of why he shouldn't pay). The kicker is... once we'd completed the form it took us to a page to track our forms progress and the damn removal from self-assessment form is sitting there as they are "doing technical work on it, or are busier than usual".



Just wondered if this had happened to anyone else? Any tips for actually getting through to the HMRC...
Sixty x

sixtyfoothigh

Update: 
Twitter. Apparently flipping Twitter is the best way to contact our government departments these days... !!!!!!.