You might also be interested in
Replies (9)
Please login or register to join the discussion.
In my view a greater scandal is the cumulating penalties for late CIS Returns, but I guess that as they are provided for in the Law, it would be harder to attack them.
This said, they were probably established by Statutory Instrument (which is the dodgy practice whereby Civil Servants write laws for MPs to rubber stamp)
Tribunal slams HMRC's Late Penalty regime
I have a client who files his P11d & regularly forgets to do it on time and only responds when the penalty of 4*100 comes in several months later. The first time he was late I appealed the penalty on the basis that, had he been told after 1 month he would have paid the £100 penalty and asked for this to be accepted. The reply from HMRC was that there was a problem with their computers and that the problem would be sorted out next year and that they would rescind all of the penalty. As he has been late a few times since, I just play the "you haven't updated your computers yet" card and the penalty goes away.
Vince Doyle
I am quite certain that some smart alec in HMRC has come up with the idea of turning penalties into a profit centre.
I don't know about the PAYE regime but I do know that we had more than one Corporation Tax returned several weeks after submission. Penalty notices (and threatening letters) followed shortly thereafter. In the end, all the penalties were appealed successfully but what a complete waste of time and money from everybody's standpoint.
PAYE penalties
I was so pleased to see the comments abou these wretched DMU letters saying "you have chosen to ignore our reasonable efforts ....blah blah blah"
I hit the roof recently when one of these landed on my desk as I had no less than seven letters to HMRC on the case unanswered
I told HMRC I intended to take legal proceedings on the grounds the statement was libellous
Of course the staff at DMU pretended not to have received much of the correspondence that was relevant
In the end HMRC paid all my time costs and the problem was resolved, but what a waste of effort
I find the only way to get a response from DMU in a reasonable time frame is to phrase correspondence entirely in CAPITAL LETTERS !!
I
Appeals and penalties
I run a very small practice and in my experience HMRC's standard argument is that they haven't received the correspondance in time or at all.
I regularly have many unanswered letters and complaints outstanding. It is frustrating beyond belief.
Do we send every letter recorded delivery?
Their argument that they haven't received it or don't know about it falls down quite quickly after they locate the relevant telephone calls chasing a response unless they try the ' it wasn't recorded and I can't know what was said' excuse or even 'I've listened to it and don't agree' without allowing you to review the same conversation, when you know what you said, and have supplied two or three further copies - all getting lost!
I recently asked an HMRC representative if that meant they believed I was lying! They do seem to have little respect for agents nowadays.
Agents and clients are on a tight budget and cannot afford to write off this wasted time, and spend further time forcing HMRC to pay.
We have had to prove several times with HMRC own generated submission confirmations that the documents were submitted, before we would be believed.
Repayments seem to go through many more departments and checks than ever before - some taking EIGHT MONTHS or more to get to a client.
HMRC's response that they win more than they lose is probably more because most people cannot afford to stand up to them, and most agents can't afford to carry the fee while they do.
Twice HMRC collection agents have bullied a client of mine into paying money he does not owe, merely covering our fees is no good to a soletrader already under extreme financial pressure.
Statements of account
I can add a new wrinkle to this. A client has a one-man company he traded through until September 2009. I was only appointed to do annual accounts and tax return - he did the PAYE. He was ill for a while and could not file returns, so he simply paid the estimated demands as and when they arrived. I didn't know this was happening.
I have tried to sort this out on the phone with HMRC, but it is not at all clear that the payments he made have been properly allocated to the right years, and transferred to other years as necessary, where there have been overpayments. It is clear from conversations with the PAYE office that there are now many adjustments / transfers on the account.
I have been asking for a statement of account (since February 2011 ...!). Only last month, after a demand from the DMU arrived, did they tell me that "we are no longer resourced to send out statements of account". The obvious question is why did no one tell me that sooner, and the subsidiary point is: how can that be an efficient use of resources? The person I spoke to seemed genuinely apologetic, and I was careful to stress I wasn't shouting at him personally. He suggested I write in with the details I know, and they will write back with additional transactions on the account. I did this, in the confident expectation that no proper response will come (does a proper response ever come from the DMU?), and I will have to escalate the matter with another complaint.
The lack of joined up thinking at HMRC is quite stunning. If the statements were available online, this would have been sorted out a long time ago.
In view of the recent crop of cases, the discussion over the penalties is going to be interesting.
PAYE Penalties - the computer says no
Carol Beer in Little Britain comes to mind.
The legislation requires reasonable discretion above and beyond computer software. Keth Gordon's CIS GPS appeal case last year demonstrated that HMRC must exercise discretion if the legislation and lawful authorities say so.
Unfortunately, there is raft of PAYE related penalties in HMRC's kit bag - consider Sch 56 late payment penalties, PAYE specified payments and distraint. In the insolvency toolbax they have NICs personal liability notices, PAYE transfer of debt... and PAYE security will be with us from 06/04/11.
Reasonable excuse is of particular interest and when will HMRC change its published guidance to staff?
Chris
Alleged late submission of P35 for 2009/10
I can go further than any other case mentioned. I have been doing this for almost two years with a file of paper nearly 2 inches thick! As described before - took HMRC 5 months before informing us that we owed £500. I had got a print out of the P35 I had submitted on 10th May 2010 and had a confirmation on screen of its acceptance. This was the first time I had done this so had NO REASONABLE EXCUSE to believe that anything was amiss. The first demand for money came in the form of a letter with no information on it. Phone calls to HMRC told us that it was a fine for a late submission and then was followed by a paying in slip. Letter to HMRC explaining the situation - written by my brother who is a partner in the company as I was on holiday. Another more detailed letter from me followed but HMRC failed to agree with anything we had said. We had "NO REASONABLE EXCUSE THROUGHOUT THE PERIOD TO NOT FILE THE P35' They didn't think that the fact that they had acknowledged receipt was good enough, especially as I hadn't printed the screen out at the time. Anyway, to save the boredom - we appealed, which was declined, visited the Citizens Advice Bureau who told me to carry on. Phone calls and visits to our MP (he wrote to the head of HMRC and it took three months for him to get a response which only told him to ask us to pay up!! First tier tribunal appeal - declined again. Asked First Tier Tribunal for permission to appeal to Upper Tribunal - declined. We now have to go to London on 24th February to the Upper Tribunal for a substantive hearing.
The last decision notice from the Upper Tribunal didn't even mention the "no reasonable excuse" bit but made the statement " that while an attempt was made to submit the P35, no attempt was made until September to submit the P14's. Doesn't anyone at HMRC know that a P35 is a summary of the P14's !!! When the submission in September 2010 was accepted, the only thing I had done was to go into the original information inputted in May, and click on the P35 SUMBIT button again! There had been a glitch in the system which no one will admit to. I did the 2010/11 submission this May in exactly the same way as last year - successfully, but still had to ring the Help-line as the screen would not allow me to change the Tax Codes of some employees. I am retired and do the PAYE and VAT returns for my brother's company. The HMRC fine represents what I live on for ONE MONTH ! I am not and repeat not paying HMRC for something I have not done. I made one mistake in all this - NOT REQUESTING AN ORAL HEARING - because I thought the matter was so straight forward and could be dealt with by letter. In commercial terms, this has cost me a fortune in time, effort, phone calls and postage, and now train fares to London. Would it have paid me to employ some professional help?? and would I have had the opportunity to ask for some recompense. I wonder !