Lost Returns Anyone?

Lost Returns Anyone?

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I have just received the most astonishing letter ever, from Bootle! The letter acknowledges that my client's tax 2002 tax return was received at their end on 4/10/02 but, snce then. it has apparently got lost!!

HMIT have written asking for a copy of our file copy but just in case we have no copy, they have sent out another 2002 ITR form for completion! I am staggered!

Is mine an isolated case or has anyone else had similar post from Bootle recently?
Jean Grantham

Replies (23)

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By richardgolding
27th Mar 2003 08:52

Ditto - another one!
2 of my clients have just received the £100 penalty notice issued by Walton-On-Thames office based at Tolworth Tower.
These returns were posted (1st class) in Tolworth on Monday 27th January. Therefore they would have arrived Tuesday 28th - or to give the benefit of the doubt - Wednesday 29th.
My clients are pulling together the paperwork so that we can appeal.

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By Anne Marie Sewell
26th Mar 2003 16:19

Lost tax returns
Last Thursday (20th March) we received a penalty notice for a client, for whom we filed the tax return, by hand, on 31st January. We have a stamped receipt. Informed client and said not to worry, we have a receipt.

Yesterday (25th March)a very distressed client phoned to say the Debt Collectors were on the phone chasing the penalty. Five days!! Didn't even give them time to pay!!! even had it been due.

I have had a verbal apology from the tax office but, ohhh, it would be very difficult for them to issue a written apology for their mismanagement and the distress it has caused.

We were not able to internet file most of the returns because guess what, they lost our forms 64-8.


Gordon Brown would be short of a lot more money if it wasn't for accountants because there is no way that the disaster of the UK tax office system could collect taxes without us. I want a salary from the Government!!

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By Albasas
27th Mar 2003 08:19

Lost Returns-Your Word Against Theirs?

Same here! I'm currently receiving the odd Penalty Notice when the SA 2002 Tax Return was put in on time,(and by the client I may say), just before either the 31st Jan or 1st Feb (default) deadlines.

It appears to me that if IR are in doubt about when they received or did not receive a return they unsurprisingly issue a £100 penalty nevertheless-as insurance-the onus on the client to prove it is in on time. Your word against theirs me thinks! As it is impractical to obtain a receipt for every client and e-filing is not always appropriate.

So in the meantime I will sit tight with my clients affected awaiting the loggers in at IR to sift through the self assessment deadline tax return mountain, (no tax owed by the clients you see), for the customary acknowledgement.

For what it is worth, I notice that agent computer generated paper returns get lost more often than the IR original bar coded ones. Maybe IR staff panic or dont know what to do when given an agent's paper copy then? Or like some relief postmen their just dumping them and getting on with more leisurely pursuits?

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By AnonymousUser
19th Jan 2003 15:54

David hill sue them for ...

David,

I suggest you also threaten them that you will sue them for trying to obtain money by deception! They are clearly threatening your clients some of whom could be old and suffering from life threatening illnesses!

Have you kept all the correspondence to prove that they have written off the penalties?

Regards,

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By AnonymousUser
08th Jan 2003 08:53

Change of tax office
My partner, Denise and I recently moved from Somerset to Coventry and this move has caused administrative problems for the Inland Revenue. Denise received a reminder for her self assessment return, together with a tax payment form from the Warwickshire Tax Office last December. This rang alarm bells as Denise had returned her completed self assessment to the Somerset Tax Office address on the form some months earlier and was expecting a substantial tax refund. A phonecall to the Revenue exposed the problem - the return had not been forwarded from the Somerset Tax Office to the Warwickshire Tax Office, who now apparently look after her affairs. Luckily we keep a photocopy of our completed returns and Denise was able to fax it directly to the Warwickshire office.
It seems a shame that the Inland Revenue did not simply send us a letter informing Denise of her new Tax Office and it's address with a request that all correspondance, especially Self assessment tax returns, are re-routed there. Failing that the ability to forward mail between tax offices would have been helpful.

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By Sherlock
09th Dec 2002 15:50

Compensation
You might like to look at my Newthwire No. 12 Complaints, Redress & Compensation). At the very least the Revenue should pay the client compensation equivalent to the additional professional fees of dealing with the return again. In theory you will need to bill the client first before this will be accepted.

My other concern would be the agreement of tax payable at 31 January 2003. Even if the form (or copy form) is completed and submitted immediately, the Revenue may not process it until after 31 January, thus causing further potential problems. You need to keep a careful record of the sequence of events, and wait until everything is agreed before making any complaints and asking for compensation.

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By AnonymousUser
10th Dec 2002 10:47

Revenue accept unsigned Return
I recently had a return that went missing. It had been logged in at a totally different office, but nobody knew where it was and I was chasing a refund.
They accepted a printed copy unsigned and have made the refund

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By User deleted
12th Dec 2002 10:13

Unsigned tax return accepted
This seems to be a standard practice. This happened to one of my clients too. No sig. was needed.

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By JamesPrice
12th Dec 2002 15:20

HMIT Sunderland....
...have apparently lost quite a bundle of them.

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By User deleted
17th Dec 2002 09:42

"Lost Returns"
In over 20 years dealing with the revenue, i have never known it to be quite so bad, my favourite is one where the tax office logged the return, detached the foriegn pages, and it took a year (and countless copies) to persuade them that this income should be included- at present I have a client who is being chased for tax when he is due a refund, both returns submitted have been lost although some of the information has been logged, they have either had the form or not. I have a very small practice and estimate problems with at least 5% of forms submitted. I suppose the things that really cheeses me off is the way the revenue make no effort to apologise or prioritise cases where they have mucked up.

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By AnonymousUser
17th Dec 2002 18:56

You better believe it !!
Following a compliance enquiry on income from property for a client, I submitted, BY HAND, three years' tax return's to the originating issue Tax Office on the 14th November 2002, which is a local office.

On 19th November, assessments for two years 1999/2000 and 2000/2001 were issued from the compliance office, although I found it most strange that the year 2001/2002 had not been dealt with at the same time.

On 22nd November 2002 they advised me that, although the 2001/2002 hd been logged in, it was not yet dealt with.

Following a written enquiry, on 11th December 2002, I received a letter stating``Regarding the 2001/2002 return. This return has not yet been captured but unfortunately appears to have been mislaid in transit between offices......`` a distance of say 20 miles!!You better believe it!

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By AnonymousUser
17th Dec 2002 19:39

Lost tax returns
Forget about clients, my local tax office (Winchester) have lost my returns for two years running despite both being delivered by hand! This is atrocious. The other problem I have had is duplicate files for clients when one part of the tax office has issued assessments and another part fine notices. How these situations occur beggars belief. They complain about overwork but they have no idea what the real world is about.

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By alex.blackwellbate
18th Dec 2002 14:05

....how many lost tax returns !!!
As a general practitioner I can claim that various tax offices have "lost" in excess of 10 client's tax returns over the past 3 years. I have also had acknowledgement of receipt and processing of a client's tax return even though the completed return was still sat in my offices and the client had definitely not sent a duplicate!! The tax office take a hard attitude to practitioners pleas even after explaining in one incident I had sent a partnership and the two relevant personal returns in the same envelope... why had the partnership and only one personal return been processed?? As the Inland Revenue refuse to accept recorded delivery or sign an acknowledgement of receipt for tax returns how are practioners supposed to know that returns have not been "received" especially bearing in mind the several months delay from posting to official acknowledgement of processing!!!!!
Maybe another discussion topic could be the number of tax returns that are processed incorrectly! who foots the bill for the extra work, telephone calls and loss of face with the client???

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By AnonymousUser
18th Dec 2002 16:44


A favourite trick in certain tax ofices that shall remain nameless is for the person opening the post to log in the top tax return where several are submitted together and fail to log in the others. Thus we sent in a partnership tax return this time last year with the individuals' returns underneath it, all under one covering letter and they only logged the partnership return. The others were treated as late and penalty demands issued. That was a lot of fun.

The lesson is to assume that you are dealing either with people who cannot read or with people who cannot be bothered to do a proper job.

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By AnonymousUser
02nd Jan 2003 14:33

They never say so.
According to IR, they "misplaced" the tax returns, not lost them.
but all the same, if it happens, we have to re-do them.

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By CrowtherP
27th Mar 2003 12:47

Royal Mail and 1st Feb. 2003
Laast year I learned that 91% of 1st Class mail is delivered the next day. 98.7% is delivered by the second work day. So there is a 1 in a 100 chance that the Royal Mail failed to get a Thursday 30th Jan. letter to the Revenue by the 1st February deadline for the Penalty. I protested against a penalty for a Wednesday 29th Jan. letter ( mailed at lunchtime) and they backed down. I said I simply did not believe them! They said it was delivered on February 3rd 2003! Try that method.

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By AnonymousUser
27th Mar 2003 00:29

I don't think it is the faultof the tax office!

I think the problem lies with the computer systems used by the Inland Revenue. Guess what, these systems were designed and implemented by disgruntled IT contractors! They didn't like IR35 and so they screwed up the entire tax system.

The sooner we get the best an reliable IT contractors who are grateful to have ANY contracts irrespective of IR35 or not the better it would be for everyone.

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By AnonymousUser
09th Dec 2002 16:14


In practice you do not need to have invoiced the client. I have managed to invoice NICO already this year for wasting my time and I am on the verge of doing the same to SVD.

You must complain on the basis that you cannot possibly bill the client for the Revenue wasting your time and the loss will therefore be yours through nobody's fault but an Inland Revenue employee. The Revenue's Customer Service Managers are approachable and human.

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By LJCWBW
16th Dec 2002 18:34

Lost returns
My firm is only small with me and 4 part time staff but we have had such a problem with lost returns in the past that we now hand deliver each and every return to the local tax office. We never ever send by post and when we deliver we get the reception at the Tax Office to sign a printed list of the clients returns submitted as received.

That Tax Office then sends the returns to the respective office by internal mail.

It is lucky that our local Tax office is a short walk away!

By the way.... this procedure was an idea of the Tax Office we use.

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By AnonymousUser
17th Dec 2002 18:51

It happens all the time
I get about one a year where the Revenue have lost returns that I know have been received.

Twice, after being told it was definitely not received, it turned out it was in the Revenue's office all the time.

You are lucky to get duplicate returns sent out automatically. I usually have to ask.

On one occasion, I submitted three returns in one envelope. Two were processed, the third (a partnership return)got a penalty notice! The penalty was cancelled when I appealed, but I never got a proper response or apology.

While the Revenue have always taken my word that the returns were posted in time, they have said that these mistakes cannot happen.

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By Clactonbs
10th Dec 2002 13:32

Lost return
Previous year I had a similar case. The revenue were prepared to accept my computer programme schedule of entries made without further signature. Believe it or not i found them human.

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By AnonymousUser
16th Dec 2002 16:31

Lost clients
Hi Jean

Is that you complaining about tax offices?

What would Mr Downs have to say about that?


James

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By lstaccy
17th Dec 2002 17:38

Nottingham
I had exactly the same letter recently from HMIT Nottingham. Luckily I also had a photocopied signed copy which I have now resubmitted.
Another Return that was submitted to Bootle at the end of August is still awaiting processing.... 3 1/2 months & counting!

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