HMRC have gone back 17 years

redfloyd · 4 March 2018 at 12:11PM

I ran my own businesses up to 2006. I decided to close the business and take early retirement. My wife and i sold up and moved overseas. We decided to come back in 2012 for personnel reasons. I then decided to take a paye job.
During the paye jobs i overpaid tax and received tax rebates 2012/ to 2015. In 2016/17 i was offered a job working under the UTR paying tax at 20%. I employed an accountant to file my tax return for that year, i was told i was due a tax rebate of £2,700.

After waiting a few weeks i rang the hnrc to see what the delay was. They informed me the £2,700 would not be refunded in fact this amount would be kept to pay off underpayment in 2001/02

2002/3 and 2003/4. I asked them for paperwork to support this claim. They sent me a basic statement letter showing dates and amounts. I wrote to them asking for the actual paperwork that enabled them to reach this decision, they replied saying the underpayments was discovered in 2007, and as a tax payer it was my responsibility to inform them of my new address. They said the paper work does no longer exist and state i have no grounds to appeal.

They also issued me with a new tax code of K648 X which gives me a tax free amount of
-£6490 Note this is minus £6490. As you can imagine as a tax payer all my life and now reached retirement age i have found all this extremely distressing. Any help or advice would be very much appreciated.

John-K_3 · 4 March 2018 at 7:48PM

Do you think that they are right with their figures?

Did you file correctly before you left, and check what you were supposed to pay at that point?

Edited to add, I they do not seem to have gone back seventeen years, they seem to have made a determination in 2007 that you owed from 2002, so that is only five years.

If I can put it a bit bluntly, did you do a bit of a flit when shutting the business down, or did you check that all was in order and properly filed, paid, and put to bed?

Chucky1234 · 4 March 2018 at 7:53PM

You do have a duty to let HMRC know of your new address but non-the-less this is how I would approach the situation.

Firstly ask them why they sent the rebates out in the years 2012-2015 if it was discovered in 2007.

If you used an accountant when you ran your own business pre-2006, do you or your accountant have tax returns that go back that far? Unlikely but worth a try. I'd certainly be very annoyed in your situation too.

redfloyd · 5 March 2018 at 1:08PM

Thank you for your replies.

John-k That is the point, i do not hold any paperwork to check there claims against. As far as i was aware all my paperwork had been filed correctly. I trusted my accountant to make sure all the returns were correct. Yes i agree they made the determination 5 or 6 years later 2007

Chucky. I can only assume the rebates were given because i worked paye. It was only after i had worked self employed using a UTR that it was noticed. I am assuming they are different departments.
I have contacted my accountant from those years. He no longer holds any records of those returns.

So either my accountant has not filed my returns correctly. Or the HMRC have made a mistake. But what is more frustrating is the fact i have to take HMRC word for it with no paperwork to start an appeal. They are basically saying it is up to you to prove otherwise.

Arthurian · 5 March 2018 at 8:46PM

Maybe try explaining your problem to the ICO? https://ico.org.uk/concerns/ A live chat or phone call wouldn't cost you much. You might ask them if it's worth asking HMRC for the records you want under a Freedom of Information request, to see if that might open up further archives that they don't normally retrieve. Just a longshot suggestion.

dori2o · 5 March 2018 at 10:04PM

Arthurian wrote: »

Maybe try explaining your problem to the ICO? https://ico.org.uk/concerns/ A live chat or phone call wouldn't cost you much. You might ask them if it's worth asking HMRC for the records you want under a Freedom of Information request, to see if that might open up further archives that they don't normally retrieve. Just a longshot suggestion.

A freedom of information request is something utterly different to what the OP wants/needs.

OP could make an application to request any/all information under a Data Protection Act request.

HMRC make no charge for these, but be aware they have 40 working days to comply with the request.

You can find more information here. https://www.gov.uk/guidance/hmrc-subject-access-request, you can also make the request online using that link.

As has been said its likely that a determination or assessment was done in 2007 as a result of an enquiry/discovery or similar event.

All information/letters would have been sent to the address HMRC held on record for the OP, given they had no reason to believe that the address was wrong given the OP didnt change their address with HMRC.

Its likely also that as correspondence was returned as undelivered/no longer at this address, then HMRC will have put a temporary hold on the balance due (referred to as a remission) to prevent further correspondence being issued via self assessment.

The OP then came back and started working under PAYE. As the Self Assessment record was not live at the time the outstanding debt would not have been picked up.

Once the OP started to work in a self employed capacity this started the ball rolling.

Once the tax return was complete and a refund showing as due, then the system would recognise that there was a 'remitted' amount on the account and would put the case on a worklist to be looked at further.

Clearly on further investigation this amount is still due and has now been brought back into charge.

If it were me I'd be sending the Subject Access Request today and seeing what information still exists.

When making your request ask for all system notes to be included as they may offer an insight into what the charges are for.

redfloyd · 6 March 2018 at 5:11PM

Thank you for your replies.

As suggested i have made the request online asking for all documentation and any system notes that would support the statements i received. I will keep you posted of any progress.

redfloyd · 3 August 2018 at 9:51PM

Well just a quick update of progress. Included with the amount owing was 5 years of late tax return filing penalties 2000 / 2005. After many letters going back and forth my latest letter from hmrc has informed me that according to his records the late returns were after all received on time and that the penalties will be cancelled. My accountant has managed to find all my returns for those years in question,I informed hmrc that i now hold the accounts and under these circumstances i believe i have a right to discussion and request hmrc to look at these returns and point out there new assessments. However hmrc still insist there are no grounds to appeal against the new assessments. So i am now looking at other ways forward.

Dazed_and_confused · 4 August 2018 at 10:12AM

Your last post makes no sense (well not to me anyway!)

If HMRC have accepted your returns were filed on time what does it matter whether your accountant has some accounts or not?

HMRC stopped accepting accounts for self employed from the 1995:96 tax year, after that all that mattered was the Self Assessment return. Which you seem to be saying HMRC have actually got.

Or is there more to this than you are really saying?

What are the "new assessments" you refer to?

And did you ever find out what adjustment was made to change your tax code to K648?

redfloyd · 5 August 2018 at 9:06PM

I am trying to explain the best i can. My knowledge of tax issues is very limited. My accountant seems to think that in 2006 the last year of my business which was a partnership, hmrc looked at my last return and decided to make an enquiry further back. They re assessed my returns for three tax years 2001/ 02 2002/ 03 and 2003 / 4 They decided there was underpayments. Also for 5 tax years my returns were filed late. As well as withholding an over payment of £2700 for 2016/ 17 they gave me a tax coded K648 to recover the underpayments. I estimate they have recovered about £7500. My tax coded is now correct. Now that we have found the accounts that were filed for those 5 years, i thought hmrc would be able to look at them and assess how much tax i would be liable for, and if and this is a big if could get copies of statements from my bank at that time i would be able to compare the tax i paid to the assessment they made.

Anyway at the end of the day they are bloody incompetent. My returns by there own admission were filed on time, so why should i believe there new assessments? That alone should give me grounds to appeal.

jimmo · 5 August 2018 at 11:56PM

You've got a right mess there but with your limited amount of tax knowledge my gut feeling is that you would be best entrusting your accountant to sort it all out for you. I can't remember now when things changed but certainly before I retired in 2006 the penalties for late Returns became quite swinging, easily reaching £1900 for a single Return. I would guess that most of what HMRC claimed you owed was late filing penalties.
Now that HMRC have found that you did file on time and have undertaken to wipe out those penalties how much do they claim you still owe?
The technical terms do seem to evolve over the years but in my latter days (2006) the only assessments were Self Assessments. There were however Revenue Amendments and Revenue Determinations. A Revenue Amendment was appealable. A Revenue Determination was an "educated" guess of your liability and there was no appeal. However it could be replaced by a Self Assessment when you submitted the relevant Return.
Now, if there were any Revenue Determinations in your case they were probably not valid because HMRC already had your Returns so they should be wiped out as well.
That should leave you perhaps owing the correct tax for each year or you may have already paid that at the correct time.
When all this is finally sorted out the fact that HMRC have already acknowledged that your Returns were filed on time indicates that they are substantially to blame for this mess and you will be able to claim compensation. Certainly in my days personal compensation was a token amount but they really should pay at least a substantial proportion of your accountants fees.
https://www.gov.uk/hmrc-internal-manuals/complaints-and-remedy-guidance/crg5225

HMRC have gone back 17 years

Comments

Categories

Get our FREE Weekly email full of deals & guides - and it’s spam-free