I have now spoken to the Employer Overpayments section at Longbenton and their initial position was that the refund would not be issued.
I asked to speak to a manger to confirm the statutory authority for this and was given somewhat incredibly S.1 Sch. 36 FA 2008 dealing with information and inspection powers.
1(1)An officer of Revenue and Customs may by notice in writing require a person (“the taxpayer”) -
(a)to provide information, or
(b)to produce a document,
if the information or document is reasonably required by the officer for the purpose of checking the taxpayer's tax position.
(2)In this Schedule, “taxpayer notice” means a notice under this paragraph.
Needles to say no such notice has been issued.
I told the manager I spoke to that this was now an MP complaint and my client was considering legal action to recover the funds and contacting Watchdog on the BBC.
At this point I was asked to select from a menu of “approved” reasons for my client having made the overpayment and assured the repayment would be issued as a matter of priority.
All well and good for my client but what we appear to have here is an abuse of statutory powers by HMRC and I have to ask, since it has been raised before, what are the professional bodies doing about it?
From what I have been told by HMRC staff this policy actually rests exclusively upon internal guidelines using a spurious reference to statutory powers which are not relevant and do not actually authorise the policy which could at best be described as of questionable legality.
In truth what HMRC are doing is refusing to make repayments of taxpayer funds which properly belong to the taxpayer with the intention of making it so difficult for the taxpayer to recover their funds that they give up and are forced to write the amounts off.
I’d like to hear from anyone else who has experience or an opinion on this disgraceful abuse of HMRC powers.
We too now have a client who has been affected by this particular issue. In this instance our client simply made the overpayment by BACs in respect of PAYE in error and is unable to explain precisely how this arose.
We have a letter in which HMRC demand a full explanation for the overpayment before the funds belonging to our client are repaid. The letter makes it clear that the overpayment will not be refunded until an explanation for the overpayment has been provided and also states that any explanation that the overpayment was simply made in error will be rejected.
When challenged over the telephone about the refusal to return our clients funds reasons of security were fallaciously cited.
Like earlier posters I have to question the legality of Revenue policy and in fact what the statutory authority for refusing to return our client’s funds is. A formal complaint has been issued to HMRC on behalf of our client and the matter raised with his MP.
Has anyone attempted to recover funds through the courts in such a situation?
I feel obliged to ask if this disgraceful conduct has been questioned by professional bodies and if so what response was obtained.
My answers
HMRC response
I have now spoken to the Employer Overpayments section at Longbenton and their initial position was that the refund would not be issued.
I asked to speak to a manger to confirm the statutory authority for this and was given somewhat incredibly S.1 Sch. 36 FA 2008 dealing with information and inspection powers.
1(1)An officer of Revenue and Customs may by notice in writing require a person (“the taxpayer”) -
(a)to provide information, or
(b)to produce a document,
if the information or document is reasonably required by the officer for the purpose of checking the taxpayer's tax position.
(2)In this Schedule, “taxpayer notice” means a notice under this paragraph.
Needles to say no such notice has been issued.
I told the manager I spoke to that this was now an MP complaint and my client was considering legal action to recover the funds and contacting Watchdog on the BBC.
At this point I was asked to select from a menu of “approved” reasons for my client having made the overpayment and assured the repayment would be issued as a matter of priority.
All well and good for my client but what we appear to have here is an abuse of statutory powers by HMRC and I have to ask, since it has been raised before, what are the professional bodies doing about it?
From what I have been told by HMRC staff this policy actually rests exclusively upon internal guidelines using a spurious reference to statutory powers which are not relevant and do not actually authorise the policy which could at best be described as of questionable legality.
In truth what HMRC are doing is refusing to make repayments of taxpayer funds which properly belong to the taxpayer with the intention of making it so difficult for the taxpayer to recover their funds that they give up and are forced to write the amounts off.
I’d like to hear from anyone else who has experience or an opinion on this disgraceful abuse of HMRC powers.
HMRC refusal to make repayment
We too now have a client who has been affected by this particular issue. In this instance our client simply made the overpayment by BACs in respect of PAYE in error and is unable to explain precisely how this arose.
We have a letter in which HMRC demand a full explanation for the overpayment before the funds belonging to our client are repaid. The letter makes it clear that the overpayment will not be refunded until an explanation for the overpayment has been provided and also states that any explanation that the overpayment was simply made in error will be rejected.
When challenged over the telephone about the refusal to return our clients funds reasons of security were fallaciously cited.
Like earlier posters I have to question the legality of Revenue policy and in fact what the statutory authority for refusing to return our client’s funds is. A formal complaint has been issued to HMRC on behalf of our client and the matter raised with his MP.
Has anyone attempted to recover funds through the courts in such a situation?
I feel obliged to ask if this disgraceful conduct has been questioned by professional bodies and if so what response was obtained.