The Lemon Fool

It looks like HMRC have changed the system for getting overpaid tax back in the self assessment. I have tried it and walked into problems such that I am going to have to contact them to sort it out. I dont know why they have done this but the old system has worked well for over 10 years.

I dont think that they have tested it very well. It is not offering me all the options that it says I could use. Some of the helps and feedback screens do not seem to work well too with no easy return path. Self assessment normally works so well. They say its to stop fraud etc.

Could you please expand on this a bit, or point us to an explanation elsewhere.

Possibly in the more general Taxes (Practical) board.

TIA

I assume you are referring to the section when you have to go back into the HMRC website 72 hours after submitting your return to complete "further security checks".

I too found the whole process change to be a bit of a pain, far more difficult than the previous system - but on reflection I did think I could see security gap with the earlier method.

I opted for the passport check, which went fine, and the quoting of specific box contents from an earlier tax return. Sadly I failed to read the instructions carefully enough, so supplied the correct contents for the wrong tax year, which clearly didn't help. I then repeated the process for the correct tax year and all went well.

There was then a delay (of about a week) before the money was paid, with no information provided about what was happening. My recollection is that the previous process was rather quicker.

Apart from me reading the instructions more carefully, I did feel there were some process improvements which could be made:

i) Better communication about what was required, when it was needed, what work was being done at their end and how long it might be reasonably be expected to take.

ii) Why not request the additional checks immediately the tax is calculated, instead of telling us to wait 72 hours? The payment would not be made until properly checked.

iii) Some tax payers will not have kept the PDF copies of the previous tax returns (indeed some people may never look at those in the first place, as it is not a requirement of self-assessment), so providing the specific figure of a box number that is not part of the self-assessment process is not overly helpful.

iv) If an inattentive person (like me) fills in the information from an incorrect return, it would be nice if the system said "Looks like you are using the data from tax year 21/22, we need it from 20/21", rather than just saying "failed".

...Good grief! What's going on now?

I also bashed in the current years figures from my SA a couple of times before I read it properly!
I agree that it could be made more user friendly.
I thought that the payment was about as quick as previous years, and if these security checks prevent fraud I am OK with a few days extra wait, I hate to think how long it would take to reclaim a tax refund that had been paid to someone else fraudulently.
A weeks wait is good compared to the eight months it took from submitting income tax relief certificates for VCT's requesting a PAYE coding change in sept 2021 to be thanked in March 2022 f9r my letter but informing me it was too late to change the PAYE codes.
The moral of the story .....try to go digital with interactions with HMRC

XFool wrote:Could you please expand on this a bit, or point us to an explanation elsewhere.

Possibly in the more general Taxes (Practical) board.

TIA

Indeed XFool , with VCTs we need to get the overpaid tax back and usually with self assesment its fairly automatic. However this new security improvment has caused me trouble because my passport is out of date and a new one in progress. It has not offered me any two items that I can identify myself with. Its very much a yearly VCT thing.

Sounds like a few of you have met this problem , Boots , CProf. My passport is not up to date and a new one is coming. I found that it only offered me four options for identification and I needed two. Without a passport I could not do it.

I didnt feel it was well explained and the helps etc didnt return well. I felt it was not up to the usual standard which I think is pretty good.

Does anyone know if this is now a general thing for overpaid tax, or is only applicable to some situations or people - as with similar sounding problems some have reported when logging on to do SA online?

I have yet to do my SA for last tax year.

I had similar problems to others, I could only provide one of the requested items on the list. I rang the HMRC helpline and (eventually) a person answered. She told me that the change in the process was causing lots of issues for people doing SA. She also released the refund while on the phone and, like everyone else, it took about a week to turn up in my bank account.

Scorab wrote:I had similar problems to others, I could only provide one of the requested items on the list. I rang the HMRC helpline and (eventually) a person answered. She told me that the change in the process was causing lots of issues for people doing SA. She also released the refund while on the phone and, like everyone else, it took about a week to turn up in my bank account.

Thats a mercy , I thought that they must be having trouble. I will be ringing on Monday. I noticed that the standard of programming was a bit average , things like radio button selections being cleared by using the nuisance cookie button requests and odd non returns of help dialogs. Confusing. Its all new and I guess that they have not had time to debug. Differences between "you need some of these 5 items" and they only offering you four items....

XFool wrote:Does anyone know if this is now a general thing for overpaid tax, or is only applicable to some situations or people - as with similar sounding problems some have reported when logging on to do SA online?

I have yet to do my SA for last tax year.

When you do the SA you tailor the items that you need to declare tax on. Thats the same but somewhere near the end of one oof the sections embedded was where you put your bank details if you need a refund for any reason , not just VCTs. That bit seems to have gone. They tell you on the calculation that you need to wait 72 hours after submission and go back in requesting a refund. I think that some other of the frontal dialogs have some changes that I read and confused but by now I was pretty annoyed. I dont have a current passport (waiting for one) and I dont use any credit etc. Lucky for me I probably do have a previous years PDF details (I hope). You do really need a current passport to do this well which is a bit political I feel as people are being forced to get one in effect.

Thanks for the answer Karellan. Though I have not yet done my SA I have now seen this issue, or its equivalent, for myself in my own online Tax Account when I click on About You in the Self Assessment section about Account payments etc.

There is now a warning on the HMRC login page about not divulging your account details to others. So they seem to be tightening up on identity security.

Thanks XFool , I sorted it out today over the phone to HMRC as did Scorab above. Their system is pretty slow and it takes time to get an advisor but they are very helpful when you connect. A few questions on last years return + the usual security and that should be it. I dont thin that they knew when it would be improved , possibly after my passport has arrived !

Thanks Boots for your observations. I failed to "pass" the verification test too, only to discover that I was answering questions about my current year's tax return (to which the refund related) rather than the prior year. After an informal chat with a fellow Lemon Fool, and reading this thread, I discovered the error of my ways and tried again today with a successful result. Schoolboy error - "read the question"! Mind you, I agree that the verification question options are somewhat limited, and the whole thing has the air about it of a crude fix that was cobbled together in haste.

Thanks for posting this. You prompted me to do my tax return, and I've just returned to it after three days to request a refund.

What a faff!

Forewarned is forearmed, or so they say. But it still caught me out. The passport was fine, but it told me to submit details for either 2019-20 or 2020-21. My first attempt was evidently the wrong year (2020-21) and was rejected. So I tried 2019-20, which finally worked.

Fingers crossed for a refund within the month. Just an 80p difference between tax paid and tax relief this year, which I call almost perfect

What happens if you have submitted a paper return because you were unable to file online because of the idiotic extra security questions? Do you have to claim any overpaid tax or do you just get it automatically when they finally get around to sending you a statement showing the tax position? Did you overpay tax because your tax code proved to be wrong?

I really don't know why they are so worried about security. It's not as though we had large sums on deposit with them. If they have to phone a security number to our registered phone no, and have voice recognition for us, that is as much as the banks (where we might have large sums in our accounts and want to transfer some/all out) require. What must it be costing them in terms of manpower and compensation and possibly not collecting tax in a timely way if at all? And what is it costing us in terms of loss of time and the effects of stress on our systems? I have just spent several hours going through the posts from Jan. 2021 to refresh my diminishing memory as regards the problems encountered with the log-in process for some people on Govt. Gateway and clearly no progress has been made since then; in fact it seems to be getting worse. I'll be posting shortly on an associated thread with an update on what has happened to me so far as regards my 2020-22 return.

I agree that HMRC are slowing down the payment of tax refunds. Until this year, I used to receive payments within a few days of filing online in April.

This year, when I was due a substantial refund, things were markedly worse. You cannot even make contact to find out what is happening until 5 weeks after the online submission. I was then told that my refund request had been forwarded to another team for review and I might not hear anything more until July. In fact, the refund was paid exactly 6 weeks after the submission date - and no interest was paid. I assume that this is deliberate policy to string out refunds. Very poor.

james188 wrote:I agree that HMRC are slowing down the payment of tax refunds. Until this year, I used to receive payments within a few days of filing online in April.

This year, when I was due a substantial refund, things were markedly worse. You cannot even make contact to find out what is happening until 5 weeks after the online submission. I was then told that my refund request had been forwarded to another team for review and I might not hear anything more until July. In fact, the refund was paid exactly 6 weeks after the submission date - and no interest was paid. I assume that this is deliberate policy to string out refunds. Very poor.

Nothing new about sometimes being selected for investigation. Happened to me in 2009 - the first year I had a substantial rebate - with a lot of misinformation and lack of response about what was going on.

At least they gave you a timescale!

What does an investigation involve? Does HMRC ask you to provide evidence of that years VCT investments (the share certificates etc)? Or can HMRC obtain all that themselves, without any input required from you?