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I totally concur with that summary of the RTI mess. If "success" is getting 99% of people to do something when you put a gun to their heads, then RTI is a success and no doubt so will MTD be one.
If your definition of success is having accurate tax records which agree to what people have submitted to you, then RTI has been a failure.
Captain Smith a.k.a Mr. Harra can stand on the bridge and say there are no icebergs, full steam ahead lads! all he wants. That did not work on the Titanic and it won't work on MTD either.
I do get the impression that the allocation of receipts for PAYE & NI is broken, and that periodically the mess gets dumped on the "debt" recovery teams.
I too run a small payroll bureau and have had around a 40 per cent error rate in notifications of incorrect paye balances, allocations and codes. Each one takes time to sort out which I cannot realistically recharge to my clients since the implications are that I am submitting incorrect data. The MTD rollout can,I fear, only lead to more issues particularly amongst my client base of small businesses.
In connection with the payrolls I run I too am bombarded with spurious letters and demands arising from the inadequacy of the dashboard.
Until such time as agents are given a dedicated line to sort matters out I have taken to ignoring such missives (with the permission of my clients). The dedicated line to debt management is no good as they are only dealing with the reports generated.
My records are correct. Those of HMRC are not.
RTI is perfect according to our Glorious Revolutionary Leaders.
Beware, or you dissidents may end up in the Gulag!
Long Live Big Brother!
Long Live Big Brother!
Long Live Big Brother!
(has someone/thing hacked my account?)
I am getting sick of dealing with specified charges where an EPS has been filed and an email confirmation from HMRC received, I am wasting hours dealing with these.
MTD = Making Things Dire
Kate you state that your time costs resolving the errors is not recoverable... From the client.
Many accountants will echo your stance and attitude.
With anger, though.
But ultimately we are doing our clients and ourselves a disservice.
En masse we should encourage clients to accept our fees for correction to HMRC errors.
Then prepare the paper work for clients to recoup the fees from HMRC.
If the profession acts as one, then the reluctant client may feel "safe" to follow our advice.
This will drive home the message to HMRC.
The compensation cost will be newsworthy as HMRC will be obliged to provide this information.
But we must get clients on side
Therein lies the problem
And HMRC know that full well, so the outcome is a Kate Upcraft article, showing HMRC failures and the professions acceptance
Are there ANY firms out there consistently charging and recovering fees on client's behalf?
"Our track record of successfully delivering these services however speaks for itself."
She's not wrong there and the fact that they have proved inefficient is why we are asking for a rethink of MTD.
I agree with all the comments made and until HMRC MTS (Make Tax Simple) and they have ledger accounts for taxpayers rather than allocation system nothing will change.
An upsurge in incorrect under and overpayment letters being issued by HMRC’s debt management and banking department.
Were all dragged into this mess, RTI is poor, the clients get hassled and who do they contact first....us.
Carolemcarre feels that clients will assume that she is at fault.
Therein lies the tragedy.
We all share that sour experience
A suitably worded explanation and apology should be demanded from HMRC. If fee recovery is not sought.
Carole can then build a, redacted, portfolio of apologies.
This portfolio can be shared with clients.
A new client should be forewarned that HMRC customer service , like the NHS, is creaking and only survives through agent goodwill.
I extract apologies from HMRC, if only to demonstrate to clients the swamp of inefficiency in which HMRC expect us to run our business.
To generate wealth and taxes for......
Whilst I am in no way defending HMRC and their pathetic attempts to embrace the digital age, in the main, provided the "input" rules are adhered to things do appear to run ok. But, make a human error, make a payment on a wrong date, miss one month and make two payments the next month letters are issued claiming under and/or overpayments.
If the letter claims there has been an underpayment the client is told "we are monitoring your payment record and expect you to keep payments up to date". Where the letter claims there has been an overpayment it says something like "we need to be satisfied this is the case and require proof from you. It will be insufficient merely to say you made a mistake".
At that point we agents need to talk with someone with more than one brain cell but we cannot. Until more resources are put into this area all is lost. I shudder to think how many trees are being felled to feed the eternal paper chase.
I did start to keep a file of the utter rubbish spewed out by HMRC but had to abandon it as it was getting larger than clients' files and I was spending too much time on it.
To all those at HMRC in charge of digitalisation please, please listen to us agents. In my view if you continue to shut us out you will not be successful in your endeavours.
We are monitoring you.
My routine response where I am on solid ground is on the following lines:
"You appear to have sent my client a threatenting letter based on fabricated and spurious data. Clearly your system has failed catastrophically to arrive at such a blunder.
Please desist from sending my client such letters until such time as you have fixed your system. Take note that if you carry on with threatening letters, my time spent dealing with them will form the basis for both a formal Complaint Case and Compensation Claim."
You know what, quite often that's the last thing we hear of it! A few times I have had to carry out the threat, to date total compensation paid has been about £1,000. I suspect HMRC has my practice flagged up with a "don't mess with this guy" flag in the database.
I have one specific client where the RTI data was captured fine for months 1 and 2, then went awry from mth 3. The error is a shortfall of liability and now my client has amassed an overpayment >£6k...which, of course, they haven't.
This has been passed to the resolutions unit/team who, I was informed, "will probably not get back before the end of the tax year"!
Can anyone explain why, when we file electronically with full html tagging on every little bit of info, the HMRC system does not update near instantly?
If I go to Australia and use my debit card, then check online banking using my smart phone, the transaction appears within 1 minute. How can this not be replicated by HMRC systems?
As for the constantly shifting sands that are payments by 'customers' and their mysterious, flexing allocation methodology. Well...
Probably because the HMRC systems are rubbish having been developed on the cheap.
But what should they care.
The design of RTI was fundamentally flawed. Its biggest flaw is the inability of agents/employers/bureaus to access detailed statements of account (at employee level) of what is held in the RTI system. So once the high level numbers being claimed by HMRC are wrong (which happens far too frequently) there is no way of working out where the error has arisen.
This was frequently pointed out (in 3rd party software developer meetings with HMRC) as a sure and certain failure point of the original design. And repeated assurances were given in those meetings that the issue would be looked at. Nothing ever happened because the people implementing RTI at HMRC didn't care; they knew that they'd have moved on by the time the chickens roosted and the design was "already done and paid for". So much for the year of pilot operations (exhibiting numerous reconciliation failures) which didn't influence the final design!
No-one would operate a credit card account or bank account on the basis of accrued historical summary totals. The very idea is laughable as it would make reconciliation a hopeless task on even the simplest lowest volume account. Yet this is how RTI (with numerous running totals of pay/tax/SxP/loan/NI/etc) is expected to work. Of course it fails!!!
We had a phone call from a new client to advise HMRC Debt Collection had phoned him demanding £6k. When we looked into things the figures on the FPS we sent bore absolutely no resemblance to the figures HMRC had received! They advised it was probably an error in the interface between our 2 systems.
They then very helpfully said it wouldn't be looked at for at least 8 months. Makes us look so incompetent.