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The 2 bugbears of paying HMRC have remained unchanged since what feels like time immemorial ... and have nothing to do with remembering to pay them or the time taken for the bank transfer to be 'cleared' in HMRC's account (both of which are true issues but really very minor).
Issue 1: the inconsistent manner with which HMRC requests each payment to be accompanied by a unique identifier. A perfectly reasonable request, but it's time that the methodology for acquiring a 'payment ID' (and the structured format of the code) were made consistent & transparent.
Issue 2: the way in which, despite those payment IDs, HMRC (or its not-so intelligent AI) elects to apply your payment to a different tax account ... or indeed spread it around a multitude of other accounts - making it near impossible to track it, let alone ascertain taxpayer's overall position.
If those issues were tackled/resolved, then there'd be some point in fine-tuning a system to remind you when to pay and (HMRC willing) be allowed to do so via Faster Payments.
Oh Joy! Where shall we start with this one!
So:
(a) There is the issue of card charges being added to payments so we can't easily match payments made by clients to the liabilities.
(b) There is the issue of the one month direct debits.
(c) There is the issue that some Clients do not understand the difference between CT, SA, PAYE, CIS, VAT, and then they have to face CGT pay and File.
(d) Then there is the issue of reference numbers!
(e) Then there is the issue of incomprehensible annual PAYE statements, which seems to extend to anything inculding the word 'Statement' produced by HMRC.
(f) The recent open banking links do work, but many clients just don't get the 'tax account' thing, isn't that why they have an accountant?
I once had a DMU officer bang on my office door demanding a CT payment (and you all know I paid it) I gave him a screen shot of the HMRC page showing I had paid it, and that they had allocated it to the wrong year! 'Sorry, can't accept that', he said! The matter went to Court (Northampton) and a couple of days before the hearing a Court clerk phoned me and said 'You're an accountant, aren't you?' Yes, I said, 'so, you've paid this on time, haven't you?', Yes, I said.. 'leave it with me' he said.... and I heard nothing more !
Is it beyond the whit of man to devise a simple method for HMRC's customers to pay their bills? Everyone else seems to maange it with consumate ease, and then they wonder why there is a tax gap :)
With NEST I can submit a client’s contributions report and collect payment through my software. Why can’t hmrc do this with PAYE?