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Self-assessment tax returns

Practical Issues
Clitheroekid
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Self-assessment tax returns

#103997

Postby Clitheroekid » December 13th, 2017, 8:25 pm

I've just seen at first hand the degree to which HMRC have disconnected and distanced themselves from the people who pay their wages.

I've an elderly client who lives alone in a fairly remote area. She has no computer nor any inclination to acquire one.

Her income consists of her state pension, a pension from her employer and a small pension from her late husband’s employer. She has maybe £35,000 in the bank, producing the usual pitiful amount of interest.

In total her gross income is probably around £18,000 - way below anything that would interest HMRC. She told me that she has never filed a tax return since she retired, some 15 years ago.

Yet out of the blue she has received an Annual Tax Summary from HMRC saying that they have assessed her annual income at just under £45,000, and that she is liable to pay tax of just under £8,000 - over 40% of her actual gross income!

The Summary was accompanied by a SA100 form carrying the usual warnings about deadlines and penalties.

She naturally panicked and, not untypically for someone of her age and situation, she was going to write to them. But although she (and I, initially rather sceptically) scoured the several pages of bumf, including the SA100 itself, there was no postal address anywhere to be seen. Unlike the online SA100 there is no information sheet with the printed form.

She therefore telephoned them on several occasions, but was simply kept waiting in a queue. Eventually, she just waited until the phone was finally answered.

She asked why they had assessed her income so wrongly, but was simply told that they could not discuss it and that she had to file the completed SA100. She was reminded about the penalties for late filing, and was also told that she should file it online.

Having explained that she had no access to a computer and no knowledge of how to use them she was asked “Have you never heard of a library?”

My client is seriously ill and virtually housebound, and has no family to support her. It would therefore not be remotely feasible for her to travel several miles to the nearest library, neither would she have any idea what to do with a computer when she arrived. But even if she wasn’t in this situation there is absolutely no excuse for such a disrespectful attitude from a public servant.

It wasn’t that long ago that she could have spoken to someone at the local tax office, who would have seen at once that there had been a major error and sorted it out. But with the move to call centres and online services it seems that people like my client have been entirely forgotten.

I've written to HMRC in `robust' terms, and I've no doubt it will eventually be sorted out. But it made me wonder how many other elderly and vulnerable people there are in a similar situation but without access to assistance.

For all the Government's lip service to non-discrimination, diversity, inclusion and all the other buzz words it seems to me that the practice is a very long way from what they preach.

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Re: Self-assessment tax returns

#104009

Postby supremetwo » December 13th, 2017, 9:22 pm

I expect this has come via the pension providers' figures to HMRC.

And the HMRC attitude will be if unable to submit yourself, get somebody else to do it for you.

I doubt that lack of computer knowledge or disability will stop their 'fine' system.

And those dealing with the day-to-day are unlikely to spot discrepancies.

chas49
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Re: Self-assessment tax returns

#104017

Postby chas49 » December 13th, 2017, 10:43 pm

The gov.uk page at https://www.gov.uk/self-assessment-forms-and-helpsheets says you can send a return either online or by post. This links to https://www.gov.uk/government/publicati ... turn-sa100 where the 2017 return includes the following:

" To find the address of the office to send your tax return to, look on the most recent correspondence from us. If you don't have any.... send your completed return to
Self Assessment
HM Revenue and Customs
BX9 1AS"

XFool
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Re: Self-assessment tax returns

#104282

Postby XFool » December 14th, 2017, 11:18 pm

1nv35t wrote:
Having explained that she had no access to a computer and no knowledge of how to use them she was asked “Have you never heard of a library?”

Doesn't things work something like you try to log in and it then calls your landline with a automated passcode to log in with as part of the secure online service. So if you're in a library (not a very secure choice in itself) and tried to log in, you'd have to return home to get the code and get back to the library again, perhaps in a amount of time before the code expired.

Surely you have heard of mobile phones and text messages? BTW, the PIN can now last for the next seven days.

HMRC originally said paper returns would remain available for those who cannot use computers. Has anything changed?

PinkDalek
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Re: Self-assessment tax returns

#104285

Postby PinkDalek » December 14th, 2017, 11:39 pm

XFool wrote: ... HMRC originally said paper returns would remain available ... . Has anything changed?


See viewtopic.php?p=104017#p104017 a few posts back.

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Re: Self-assessment tax returns

#104428

Postby Cornytiv34 » December 15th, 2017, 5:44 pm

I have had so many letters and complaints unanswered I wrote to our MP as follow.

I seek your help generally on this urgent matter then later on my specific problems with HMRC.

a HMRC is too understaffed without enough competent officials for efficient performance of the new tax calculation and collection methods if these are legalised by Parliament in the Budget. These practices have been trialled disastrously resulting in huge backlogs of months of unanswered and ignored letters and phone calls. One could suspect they have a deliberate policy of no longer responding to letters. Telephone contact is very complex. Inadequately identified incompetents constantly go away for help. These problems are endemic.

b Staffing must be improved and backlogs of unresolved cases must be cleared before any changes or further legal authority is permitted. No Minister is responsible for the Department. The Board is clearly failing to manage its affairs and HMRC has totally failed in it’s Charter to taxpayers. Were it a business responsible to a financial regulator there would be substantial fines and the board would be forced out.

c Not all taxpayers are digitally competent, connected or able to cope with doing everything digitally or telephonically. Arrangements have to be made for them to continue to deal as they have in the past. Some have hearing problems or poor vision (screen designers like light colours instead of clear black & white). Most of us, as we get older, are not as quick thinking, and forget things during extended phone sessions or cannot recall what was on a previous page, it will get worse. Others like to have all information reviewed, prepared and cross checked knowing what to has to be entered. The Government websites searches often show a myriad of entries few of which are relevant to the specific question. Total digitisation is impossible.

My affairs are simple but while the specifics are not relevant here the attitude and incompetence of HMRC is. Bearing in mind the inadequate staffing is unacceptable for them to:-

A “Guess” what income in a year “might be”, tax that “might” be payable or tax “said to have been” underpaid in other years. Fail to supply calculations of tax payable or say they have advised the taxpayer when they have not.

B Combine alleged unpaid tax for all prior years into one figure the taxpayer cannot verify.

C Immediately adjust the PAYE code so tax is deducted from salary or private pension without taxpayer validation. HMRC is “Judge and Jury” this is stealing particularly when they consistently fail to answer correspondence.

D Fail to answer promptly or at all questions raised by taxpayers or to repeatedly fail to respond to letters of complaint resulting sent to the special Complaints Postcode

E Cash cheques paying tax and not apply the sum to the taxpayer’s PAYE account for many months causing overpaid tax.

F Use software that is inadequately tested. HMRC software, when working from the Works and Pensions database, previously produced incorrect State pension figures. They have authorised personal allowances to be applied, and transferred when no transfer was permitted. Are current programmes accurate? Will the programmers be able to accurately programme the budget changes in time to enable the correct tax codes prior to the next tax year?

G Use forms that are full of ambiguous, non specific or generalities

H Not make telephone contact simple. Telephone calls are a nightmare, if you can get through and navigate the complicated registration system.
The problems are not restricted to individuals as accountants are having to alter their correct computer programs to agree with the incorrect HMRC computer programs to get any conclusion, with the problems kicked into the next year.


This extract from my recent letter sums it up! “I seek assistance from a senior person who will actually read my letters properly and give relevant answers. I had expected that persons dealing with me on the telephone or otherwise would have an understanding of how HMRC and its computers work. My hearing is not good and the exhausting process before being able to speak to someone is daunting. Similarly my eyesight is not good, I have to use two sets of glasses while trying to do things online flicking up and down, changing glasses to read from documents and another to read the screen then finding my way around forms is impossible. “ Still no reply!


Please do not allow this new system to be passed in the Budget without restrictions.


stewamax
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Re: Self-assessment tax returns

#104934

Postby stewamax » December 18th, 2017, 2:06 pm

Even if you use their online service - and you can't submit electronically and get a correct assessment if you have one of the many numbered exclusions - any replies you get in response to a message you send to them can appear in more than one place. I messaged them but had no reply. I eventually found that I have (at least) two sets of mailboxes: one in the SATR area defiantly saying I had no Inbox messages and another one containing a (reasonable) reply.

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Re: Self-assessment tax returns

#112315

Postby bungeejumper » January 21st, 2018, 3:09 pm

Hallelujah, we finally got the wife's Self-Assessment tax return finished, in just over two and a half hours. Crack the champagne!

The usual ambiguous definitions, the usual serpentine complications in amending later questions that you didn't see coming when you first filled out Section Three forty minutes ago - meaning that you now realise that you've been trying to answer the right questions on the wrong sub-forms, because you'd never known that the right forms were waiting invisibly for you if only you'd known which of the ambiguously-labelled tick-boxes would reveal them and make them visible. (If you see what I mean?) Grrr, those intelligent forms have a few things to answer for.

Not to mention the usual entry boxes that suddenly decide, for no apparent reason, that they won't accept 0, nil, none, 0.0, nought, a space mark, or nothing at all. And which send you round and round in eternal error-message loops until you want to scream out like those poor blokes trapped in Kafka novels. "What do you want from me?"

And then there are those cute little question mark logos on the form that are supposed to call up a Help topic, but don't. But which can be persuaded to work if you right-click them and tell them to open in another window. (This with Internet Explorer 11.) Gotta have a bit of intuition sometimes. But why can't they just work like other people's hyperlinks?

This year we managed to complete the forms without having to resort to last year's desperation tactic, which was to write "mind your own effing business" into a couple of "stuck error" boxes that wouldn't accept noughts or blank spaces or anything else. It cleared them beautifully. All we had to do then was remember to delete them before we submitted the form. :lol:

We are a pair of graduates, and I've spent 35 years around the fussy end of the financial sector. It beats me how some people from less exalted backgrounds manage to cope with these forms at all.

BJ

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Re: Self-assessment tax returns

#112323

Postby bungeejumper » January 21st, 2018, 3:54 pm

One small giggle from this year's tax form came from the box for tips and gratuities.(Which was a bit of an odd thing for the tax form to be insisting on having an entry for, considering that my wife is a director of a small property company. But anyway....

The giggle? It was that, according to the Help pop-up, this box will accept an amount expressed in negative numbers. Now if anybody can explain why a company should be handing out tips and gratuities to its customers, I'd be fascinated to hear the rationale. ;)

BJ

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Re: Self-assessment tax returns

#118803

Postby Pastcaring » February 17th, 2018, 3:22 pm

Hi all

Good to see tax offices are bad all over.In Australia we have had self assessment forever.Never had a problem with it for around 37 years until this year.

Down here gross income minus deductions equals taxable income.Tax year is 1 July until 30 June.

Being old I insist on paper returns and want nothing to do with the bane of my life,computers.Did my return,sent it off and waited for my rebate.Usually takes around 6 weeks.

Five weeks later I get my assessment back,a rebate of around 50% of what I expected.I didn' t have my glasses on but knew something was wrong .Once I had my glasses on I realised they were asking me to pay more tax,I owed them money

Had a think and realised that my gross income had been entered into their system as my taxable income.They forgot to take off interest deductions.My income is now derived purely from rent and dividends so interest deductions are fairly high.

Web site says call us ( ATO) for simple mistakes,we can probably correct them instantly ,so I did.

Then it starts,computer says.From around Sept last year until now ,computer still says .

Sometimes I can be a stroppy old bugger,eventually after the usual threats of legal action and dire penalties for tax evasion I had enough.Tell your computer to take me to court and bring my tax return with it.

When they get to court it should be very interesting,I have proof of deductions.Gross income is on page 3 of the return,deductions are on page 4, along with A - B equals C (taxable income ) .They just refuse to admit they could possibly make such a simple mistake.My day in court should it ever happen should be good fun.

This happens once in a while down here especially with banks .Nobody at a bank can do mental arithmetic,when I do it for them they say they cannot check it as they have no calculator handy.

You tell them somebody has pressed the wrong key on a computer and they say that could not be possible,systems etc.Take them to the ombudsman and 6 months later a grovelling apology,would I accept a refund of the overcharging and maximum penalty of $1000 .They only overcharged me $96 ,they will just not accept they could make a mistake.The grovelling apology is always ,somebody pressed the wrong key on a computer.We cannot understand how it occurred.

Where would we be without computers.There seems to be quite a backlash building up here as the ageing population is forced to use technology they ( and the inventors of it) do not understand.The " experts " are beginning to think it could be a large cost to the economy as it gets worse.

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Re: Self-assessment tax returns

#118828

Postby XFool » February 17th, 2018, 5:42 pm

Back to the OP:

Clitheroekid wrote:I've just seen at first hand the degree to which HMRC have disconnected and distanced themselves from the people who pay their wages.

I've an elderly client who lives alone in a fairly remote area. She has no computer nor any inclination to acquire one.

Her income consists of her state pension, a pension from her employer and a small pension from her late husband’s employer. She has maybe £35,000 in the bank, producing the usual pitiful amount of interest.

In total her gross income is probably around £18,000 - way below anything that would interest HMRC. She told me that she has never filed a tax return since she retired, some 15 years ago.

Yet out of the blue she has received an Annual Tax Summary from HMRC saying that they have assessed her annual income at just under £45,000, and that she is liable to pay tax of just under £8,000 - over 40% of her actual gross income!

In my experience HMRC always use the last figures they have any record of, so their assessment of her income may well have been based on her income 15 years ago - perhaps when she was an employee.

Anyway, how did this all work out in the end, Clitheroekid?

gryffron
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Re: Self-assessment tax returns

#118897

Postby gryffron » February 18th, 2018, 10:46 am

bungeejumper wrote:One small giggle from this year's tax form came from the box for tips and gratuities..., this box will accept an amount expressed in negative numbers. Now if anybody can explain why a company should be handing out tips and gratuities to its customers, I'd be fascinated to hear the rationale. ;)

Surely a company could be administering tips paid from customers (via card payments etc) TO its staff. So the negative amount is the amount distributed to staff. Maybe?

Gryff

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Re: Self-assessment tax returns

#118915

Postby Midsmartin » February 18th, 2018, 12:56 pm

And who would want to sit in a public library to complete your tax return on line, sitting in a public place surrounded by piles of private bank statements and the like, and trusting that the library's computer is secure, and not inadvertently recording your information.

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Re: Self-assessment tax returns

#118975

Postby scotia » February 18th, 2018, 8:20 pm

In my experience HMRC always use the last figures they have any record of, so their assessment of her income may well have been based on her income 15 years ago - perhaps when she was an employee.

Agreed - when interest moved to gross with the tax being removed by HMRC, my wife received a tax code which assumed she still had interest when she last submitted a return - back in the days when interest rates were around 7%, and not when they had dropped to around 1%. However a simple note to HMRC corrected the tax code.
And moving on to the subject of computers, many (about 45) years ago I went to a presentation by a prestigious international computer company who were proposing the benefits of computers to the Electricity supply industry. At question time one elderly engineer said that he had heard lots of stories about computer errors. The bright young salesman replied that there were no such things as computer errors - it was always a human error, but if you called it a computer error, then the public seemed to accept it without complaint.
And continuing the topic of technology - yes its difficult for oldies (I'm a septuagenarian youngster) keeping up with technological change. I remember in my father's village most pensioners went along to the post office with their pension book to collect their weekly pension. Then the government introduced pin codes which the pensioners had to tap into a machine - if they could remember it. This caused great problems until the postmaster (probably illegally) kept a list of his customers pin numbers, and tapped them in for them.

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Re: Self-assessment tax returns

#124012

Postby Bodkin » March 11th, 2018, 5:31 pm

To Clitheroekid

The answer on help for your friend is Tax Help for Older People. This is a charity that was set up to help older people with their tax situation. With the changes at HMRC it is a very busy charity.

I am not allowed to post links but a search will find the charity.

They will do home home visits, although this does depend on whether they have volunteers locally.

Clitheroekid
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Re: Self-assessment tax returns

#124242

Postby Clitheroekid » March 12th, 2018, 2:07 pm

Many thanks for that - I must admit I'd never heard of them, but it's useful to know they exist.

Fortunately, it's all been sorted out now, with an apology from HMRC.

Bodkin wrote:I am not allowed to post links but a search will find the charity.

For other readers this is the link - http://www.taxvol.org.uk/


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