Confused about work from home tax relief

IronIron

Hi, can anyone help me to understand what has gone wrong with my claim for working from home tax relief from HMRC?

I was sent to work from home by my employer in March 2020 and have worked from home ever since. I looked up the relief process on HMRC in early 2020 and back then it was saying that you have to claim after the fact (at end of tax year for the year before) unless doing self-assessment (I don’t). I contacted my employer who said I would have to apply myself as they had no plans to give people sent to work from home anything extra.

I went back to HMRC, but at that time they would only let me claim for 2 weeks (up until April 2020) and so I didn’t bother. For the rest of the year I would have to wait a year and then apply.

Fast forward to March 2021 and ML is on TV saying that we should all go online quick and make our claims as the simplified HMRC claim services was ending soon. So, in March 2021 I made an online claim via HMRC and put in my date working from home starting back in march 2020 and ongoing.

The text on the HRMC site read to me like they would take the dates and just work it all out for me and send my employer what code to use. I got a letter from HMRC in the post (still in March) showing an old and new code for April 2020-April 2021 and saying that they had contacted my employer.

On my April 2021 payslip the code hadn’t changed. On my May 2021 payslip the code has changed but not to the one HMRC gave me in the letter and seems to just be the normal one for this tax year.

I contacted my employer and they replied saying I need to apply again.

This is where I am confused. Why do I need to apply again, isn’t this process automatic after giving HMRC the dates? Why did ML tell us to go online and apply if it doesn’t work and we have to go online again a few weeks later and do it again?

I’m sure I’m missing something really obvious, but could someone please explain what I’m supposed to do and why what I did so far isn’t working?

Dazed_and_C0nfused

You have completely misunderstood the process.

You could (should) have applied once the HMRC system was available and them you would have received the benefit through your wages.

As you didn't do that until very very late in the tax year you will now need to wait for HMRC to review the 2020:21 tax year and they will refund any tax overpaid direct to you.

https://www.gov.uk/tax-overpayments-and-underpayments

Have you actually claimed for 2021:22 yet?  If so you will receive any benefit via your payslip.  If not then why would you get any refund?  What was the tax code for April payslip and the new one for May?

IronIron

Dazed_and_C0nfused said:

You have completely misunderstood the process.

Thanks for replying

Yep, I’m pretty sure I could have misunderstood the process because information seems to have been contradicting

HMRC was telling me back in March 2020, that you have to claim after the tax year is over (so after March 2021) and ML was saying on TV that we had to claim quickly before the end of the tax year (so before April 2021).

So, ML was giving wrong advice on the TV because it was already too late in the year? He explained it as if people would be claiming for that year (April 2020-March 2021).

I could (should) have applied once the HMRC system was available? I didnt know it existed until I saw the ML show at the end of the year. Why would HMRC let me fill in their form and send me a letter saying 'you dont need to do anything' if it was too late?

How do I know that HMRC will sort this out, it says on that link you posted they will send me a letter by November? Would it be better to just claim again? I haven’t claimed for this year no, because again it was explained on the HMRC site back in Mar2020 that only self-assessment people can claim ahead of time and others have to wait until the end of the year and claim for the year before.

Apr20-Mar21 code was 1250L

Apr21 and May 21 (for both) code is: 1257L

[Deleted User]

I can only echo what Dazed has said: 

If you have claimed for 2020/21 HMRC will review when they get around to reviewing the tax year. As a basic rate taxpayer this would equate to a refund of £62.40, or double that if you pay tax at 40%. If you wish to claim in this current tax year you should now do so and you tax code will be adjusted accordingly. 

That’s the long and the short of it!

sheramber

Go into your personal tax account and see what is says there.
https://www.gov.uk/personal-tax-account

IronIron

Thanks for the advice. I looked at some other sources and it seems there are a lot of people in the same situation I am. To claim for this year you have to tick whether you wish to claim for previous years also. Im not sure whether to tick that or not and so I think Im just going to contact HRMC direct and try to get advice from them. To me it seems the simpliest solution would be a to just forget the previous years and get a tax code for this year that covers all of them, but I guess it doesnt work that way. I'll hopefully sort it out with HMRC directly.

sheramber

Previous years are dealt with separately. They cannot amend your current year tax code to include that.
At the start of the year  the wfh allowance due to covid was not automatically carried forward.
It was agreed after the start of the year to give the allowance.
So, it may be that your original claim only covered previous years and you now simply need to claim for  the current year.