PastDue Credit Solutions - chasing for HMRC payment

General_Grant

Received a letter (8 days after it was supposedly "sent") from Pastdue saying I owed their client, HMRC, £4,3xx.24.

I have not received any communication direct from HMRC for this amount.

I paid HMRC £5,1xx.84 in March and £100 in April.

Should I not have received another communication from HMRC rather than this letter from their agent?

Brie

Have you checked your tax account on the HMRC website? Have the payments you made been noted on there?

Presumably you haven't moved recently so the post hasn't been delivered to an old address but yes I would have thought they would have contacted you. Many creditors will post something to say an overdue account is being assigned in some way to a debt agency.

If your tax account shows you as up to date then I suggest you ask Pastdue to prove you have a debt. I suspect that the paid amounts may not have been updated prior to them passing the presume debt along.

edited to add - post from anywhere in the UK can take up to a month to get to us due to Royal Mail being understaffed locally.

General_Grant

I can't access my online account (problems with mobile/receiving codes).

I have lived in my current home for almost half my life. Perhaps the Royal Snail takes a long time to get letters from Scotland to the south of England.

I'll try the link they provide to "manage your account online at pastdue.co.uk" but only if I don't need to provide more information than they have given in the letter.

Brie

You're not in Christchurch or vicinity are you? I've been told the signals round there are horrid and have the same post problems I have.

You could pop them the prove it letter by post given they already have your address.

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sourcrates

Past due credit solutions is on the list of approved debt collectors HMRC uses.

Its not unusual for them to outsource collection of unpaid tax.

Are you saying you dispute owing this amount to HMRC?

If so then I agree you should ask past due to prove your liability in this case.

Past due may have held this account for a fair while before contacting you.

General_Grant

https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/comment/82017670#Comment_82017670

I do not know whether or not I owe HMRC anything.

I do know I have not received any request for payment from HMRC for the sum being quoted.

I do know I have paid almost £1,000 more than is now being claimed as due according to Pastdue.

sourcrates

Put it this way, if HMRC were a business, they would have gone bust years ago due to appalling customer service, serious deficiencies in how they operate, and incompetence on a level you have to experience to believe.

So they may say they have tried to contact you on numerous occasions previously, most of the time that`s untrue, they have so many open cases to chase they systematically refer them straight to debt collection as a matter of course, as they cannot cope with the demand.

So this is not unusual.

ArtyJ931

I got a £1100 bill from HMRC out of the blue a couple of years ago despite being a PAYE employee because they had my tax code very slightly wrong for a number of years apparently. They gave me 12 months to pay it back! So I would concur - they are shocking.