Registered client mid-November 2015 for 5th April 2015 return. UTR received on 30th November (quick) and return filed on that day. Out of the blue, our client gets a £1200 penalty letter from HMRC on 3rd January 2017. The UTR is different and so is part of the post code. As no 64-8 in place for this UTR, asked client to phone HMRC. After braving the voice mail system, first thing our client hears is "are you phoning about a duplicated self assessment registration?" This makes me believe that there are others out there who will also have received £1200 penalty notices. This was the first my client had heard of the duplicated UTR. No notices of registration or to submit a return were received. It is appalling that the first contact is a £1200 penalty letter. Needless to say the client was initially shocked, until I was able to provide the assurance that the 2015 return was correctly filed and that this was an HMRC error. Anyone else had a similar experience?
Replies (6)
Please login or register to join the discussion.
It happened to me personally 2 years ago. They eventually cancelled the 2nd one after stating that I should use the new one. I told them to bog off and it worked
For future reference, you can still deal with it by phone. Simply use the reference that you are authorised for to go through security, and then inform them of the duplicate UTR.
We are getting a number of complaints from clients for pentalty of late filing tax return due to "duplicated UTR" cases in the recent weeks, and I beleive more to follow. It seemed that something wrong with The Revenue's system (computised or human) that duplciated UTR set up through linking the tax payers' NI no. The Revenue should have an thorough investigation into why this is happening. This is wasting everybody time and puting the accountants' competency in dealing with clients' tax return in question. Another [***] up with The Revenue ~AGAIN!!!