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looking for bit of advice

Practical Issues
scrumpyjack
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Re: looking for bit of advice

#442479

Postby scrumpyjack » September 15th, 2021, 1:47 pm

Any organisation is only as good as the people you deal with and that applies also to HMRC. Over the decades I have encountered good and bad, mainly the former, but the bad as well! One difference with HMRC is that they have no competition. It is rather absurd to refer to us as 'customers' when we cannot take our custom elsewhere!

Many years ago they notified me that they were starting an enquiry into my tax return. This surprised me as I have always been scrupulously honest with my tax returns! Of course when they do this they go on a fishing expedition. They don't tell you you what they think you have omitted. Why would they, obviously they also want you to confess to things they do not know about. In my case there had been a massive drop in interest received compared to the previous year for perfectly valid reasons so I thought that might be the trigger. Anyway I just sent them full detail of everything, including cash flow for the whole tax year. I did not want it dragging on and on as they can be incredibly slow. It did nevertheless drag on and eventually they accepted that everything was OK, and in fact I had paid a little too much tax. They did not offer to refund the excess, or thank me for my co-operation. They simply notified me the inquiry was closed.

In some ways HMRC are staggeringly incompetent. Two examples are that it is still not possible to fill out the whole of the Self Assessment return on their website. For example they don't support the Minister of Religion pages - it's only a couple of pages and their processing system deals with the figures entered as submitted by commercial software. So why can't they set up a couple of extra input pages and save 50,000 people having to buy commercial software or send a paper return? The other example is that in several tax years their system has not computed the tax due correctly in accordance with the law. Each time this has been discovered by commercial software houses whose software must arrive at the same calculations as HMRC even when HMRC are wrong. In spite of many months notice of the errors they have been unable to amend their systems. Commercial software such as TaxCalc has had to report the incorrect figures even though they and HMRC know they are incorrect!

Lootman
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Re: looking for bit of advice

#442483

Postby Lootman » September 15th, 2021, 2:03 pm

scrumpyjack wrote:Many years ago they notified me that they were starting an enquiry into my tax return. This surprised me as I have always been scrupulously honest with my tax returns! Of course when they do this they go on a fishing expedition. They don't tell you you what they think you have omitted. Why would they, obviously they also want you to confess to things they do not know about.

At least in the case of Steelman99, the taxman has identified the amount of tax owed: £60. So presumably Steelman could just send that amount and be done with it. It would not feel good if he genuinely does not believe it is due. But one might take the view it is worth £60 to make the taxman go away. Especially if there might be other items that perhaps also got overlooked.

On the other hand, if the taxman just writes to you and says they they are "starting an inquiry", and they provide no other information, then I do not know how you can possibly respond to that since it so vague and open-ended. I might just reply: "Please do, and let me know what you find!" Or not reply at all.

ursaminortaur
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Re: looking for bit of advice

#442493

Postby ursaminortaur » September 15th, 2021, 2:38 pm

Lootman wrote:
scrumpyjack wrote:Many years ago they notified me that they were starting an enquiry into my tax return. This surprised me as I have always been scrupulously honest with my tax returns! Of course when they do this they go on a fishing expedition. They don't tell you you what they think you have omitted. Why would they, obviously they also want you to confess to things they do not know about.

At least in the case of Steelman99, the taxman has identified the amount of tax owed: £60. So presumably Steelman could just send that amount and be done with it. It would not feel good if he genuinely does not believe it is due. But one might take the view it is worth £60 to make the taxman go away. Especially if there might be other items that perhaps also got overlooked.


Or will that just confirm to HMRC that whatever they thought you hadn't declared really hadn't been declared and next year when you don't declare it again (since you don't know what it was) the whole thing starts over again with them saying you owe another £60 (or more).

Alaric
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Re: looking for bit of advice

#442527

Postby Alaric » September 15th, 2021, 3:46 pm

ursaminortaur wrote:Or will that just confirm to HMRC that whatever they thought you hadn't declared really hadn't been declared and next year when you don't declare it again (since you don't know what it was) the whole thing starts over again with them saying you owe another £60 (or more).


If the account had been closed without the OP having taken a note of the interest earned, it isn't going to reappear next year. If on the other hand, it's misidentification by HMRC, the problem will likely continue.

Assuming that all money involved in opening or closing online accounts went through a current bank account, trawling historic bank statements (which should be available online) is likely to be necessary. With interest rates at minimal level, a chunky amount of deposit is needed to generate any worthwhile interest.

There is another possibility to eliminate from enquiries, that's OEICs, ITs and ETFs. Not all their distributions take the form of dividends. When the underlying investment is corporate bonds or other interest paying instruments, distributions or part of them may have taken the form of interest. The Broker's CT61 annual statement should have the details. This discloses all the explicit and implicit payments made on investments held with that Broker outside ISAs and SIPPs.

richlist
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Re: looking for bit of advice

#442605

Postby richlist » September 15th, 2021, 7:11 pm

I'm surprised HMRC want to bother chasing such a small sum of money. I'd have thought that with minimal staff and in the middle of a pandemic where effort, resource & results really, really matter there are far bigger fish to catch.

DrFfybes
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Re: looking for bit of advice

#442798

Postby DrFfybes » September 16th, 2021, 5:00 pm

My my, some people are tetchy this week :)

FWIW the Post Office were a nightmare with old accounts - they released new 'issues' every few months with differing interest rates, often only a fraction of a percent higher, but for 10 mins on the site you could switch.

But try finding ANY info on the ones you switched from at the end of the year - not a chance. You had to email and ask. Not only that but the end of year Statement they helpfully send you to fill in your tax return ONLY included open accounts, so if you switched in October you could very easily only declare half the interest on an account without realising it.

Back to the OP, they are claiming an extre £420 of interest, presumably for an account closed part way through the year? At current rates that suggests a minimum of £42k tucked away somewhere you have forgotten about. Is that likely?

Another option is that you have a Unit Trust that pays interest instead of a Dividend, and have mis-reported it?

Paul

steelman99
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Re: looking for bit of advice

#442803

Postby steelman99 » September 16th, 2021, 6:32 pm

Thanks all for your advice

Ive started checking through things , and one thing that has come to light is that as Im POA for both my parents and the inlaws , the documents from some banks & a certain building society are going to the parents/inlaws addressed as Mr A Steelman & Mr& Mrs B Steelman

in otherwords my name is appearing on the statements - Nationwide seem to do this all the time , and Santander send me copys of the statement , even though these are not actualy my accounts , and I Know TSB linked me in with the parents accounts as when they tried to move them to another a using the 7 day transfer service TSB blocked them as the names on the accounts didnt match - ie my name was not on there

will start checking , but at the moment , the only closed acclunt I cannot find any info for is a Nationwide account which was closed in may 2020, from records i have it had a balance in the low £100's at 1% interest , so no way is that the missing account

steelman99
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Re: looking for bit of advice

#444191

Postby steelman99 » September 21st, 2021, 4:52 pm

Just to let all know problem has been resolved , from owing the taxman over £60 , theres nothing now to pay

apparently i Had some savings accounts in 2018/19 tax year , and for some reason they had rolled them over into 2019/20 and again into 2020/21, and assumed i would be getting the same rates of interest that i got in 2018. problem was 2 or 3 of them were regular savings accounts at 5% interest , so paid over £100 each in interest.

was all yeterday gathering tax certificates , then 2 hours today on the phone comparing my figures with theres and dragging old statements out to show accounts were closed

one thing it shows is HMRC dosent know its asshole from its elbow , as there were several small accounts i told them about that they didint have records of , and several accounts they had down as paying interest that were closed years ago

pje16
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Re: looking for bit of advice

#444194

Postby pje16 » September 21st, 2021, 5:05 pm

steelman99 wrote:one thing it shows is HMRC dosent know its asshole from its elbow

You seem surprised at the above :roll:
Glad to hear it's sorted


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