Bit of a rant - maybe it's the heat.
Ltd company client came to us with no payroll scheme set up to recover their CIS deductions from the 17/18 tax year (shouldn't have been incorporated in all honesty but this was done by the client without any advice from an accountant, of course).
We set up payroll scheme to enable us to file EPS submissions.
HMRC set up the scheme from the date we registered.
We called HMRC and asked them to predate the PAYE scheme registration date to the 2018 tax year to enable us to file.
HMRC said yes, no problem, will set it up for the 17/18 but wait 72 hours before submitting anything.
We waited 5 weeks due to no payment from the client.
We submit 17/18 EPS for months 1-11 with no payments due - fail code 7806.
We call HMRC - HMRC say you need to only do month 12 as it's been set up for the last month of the 17/18 tax year (from 30/03/2018).
I stupidly put the phone down before trying again - fail code 7806.
Call HMRC a third time - get a borderline argumentative HMRC employee who did not like my questions one bit - but to her credit she did (I hope) figure out the problem. Whilst the scheme set-up date has been predated to March 2018, the mandation date (which is apparently the date from which HMRC will expect RTI submissions) is set up as 2019.
So now we need to call the empoyers helpline to get this changed.
And we will then, more likely than not, get a letter from HRMC informing us that they cannot confirm the CIS dedcutions we are trying to reclaim and we will have to send them more info.
Does it have to be this complicated?
Has anyone got any advice/warnings on how to proceed?
Replies (11)
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Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity but reached the conclusion that HMRC deliberately make this process as difficult as possible in the expectation that a significant portion of CIS deductions will never be claimed.
I'm just being mischievous although I did have to read it two or three times to grasp your meaning.
I think "antedate" might be more accurate than "predate".
Predate doesn't seem appropriate at all.
Made me smile, though.
We will persevere with this nonsense.
Well, if you must. I really don't understand why you didn't just write to HMRC to get the refund in the first place. Yes it can take 3 months for HMRC to action but it takes 10 minutes of billable time for you instead of hours of frustration, and you'll probably have to end up writing anyway.