A rant - Debt Management units vs PAYE office response times

A rant - Debt Management units vs PAYE office...

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I am absolutely sick to the back teeth of dealing with HMRC on PAYE issues.

We have clients where HMRC systems appear to have doubled up PAYE/NIC due. Others have had HMRC tinker with the allocations leading to underpayments in one year, overpayments in the other.

The DMUs jump all over the client within days to chase any supposed underpayment, but although we are contacting them to say it's incorrect and we've raised it with PAYE, and taking a name to make sure, despite their assurance that it's on hold while we sort it out they continue to chase and are telling some clients that they have no record of us contacting them which undermines client relationships.

The PAYE office then takes over a month to open a letter and another month to respond - usually incompletely leading to hours being expended sorting out what on earth their system has done.

On another client, we last spoke to the PAYE office in Sep 13 and they told us their system wouldn't let them look up what the underpayment was made up of, but they felt it wasn't due as they'd allocated payments to the wrong year. Nothing further was heard until today - two years on they've added £500 of interest to the original £3000 debt threatening distraint if it's not paid immediately.

I don't have many staff and we've got approx 60 payrolls and this is taking up hours each week.

What can we do? Is it just us? My attitude now is to simply send them a payment record, a copy of the payroll, tell them that they now have the info required to match it up and if they bother the client again, we will invoice them but really, someone needs to fix this system, and fast.

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Time for change
By Time for change
07th Oct 2015 08:37

My own view, for what it's worth

is there should be a formal enquiry, into this aspect of life at HMRC. Please though, not Chilcot.

Interaction between the Paye section and, say, Corporation tax, is none existent.

I imagined that CIS deduction data, which I'd submitted under the RTI arrangements in April, would have been dealt with automatically. Not so, says the PAYE section, you have to request the refund.

Once requested and accepted, the repayment takes a further 2 months. In the meantime and, in spite of advising the CT section precisely what is going on, calls are received from them, for an update! Not only are we dealing with our own practice management, we're also expected to oversee how HMRC manage theirs.

Most aspects of HMRC are shambolic. The Paye section just rises above the rest of the detritus.

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blue sheep
By NH
07th Oct 2015 11:36

i feel your pain

I feel for you, we are in exactly the same situation, even one case I took to an AAM resulted in her telling me there was nothing she could do, that was a few months ago and its still not sorted.  I know exactly what HMRC could do very easily to sort it, but they wont.

Dont get me started on CIS refunds, months of delays, letters just ignored, I have about 50k owing back to clients.  Clients who are used to only paying us when they get the refunds which in the past has seemed fair enough but now....

If I had hair left I would be tearing it out daily.

Its a complete shambles

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