Tax rebate cheeky bugger

[drinkingwineoutofamug]

So had a letter off HRMC to say I had over paid tax by £35. They would send me the payment through some company called Brooksdale. Just had a message off said company to claim my £35. No it will be £18 after brooksdale take their fee!
So my question is how do I get the full £35? I now can't find the letter I got last week to contact HRMC .

Looking at the breakdown on the back of letter
Has my employer name and income/income tax
Deductions
Fees/subscriptions £168 god knows what for
Flat rate job expenses £125
Then the rest is personal tax allowance , income tax rates .

I'm gathering my nmc payment is included in deductions ?

I don't claim any benefits either.

Scam. My DH got a rebate recently - letter with cheque attached to the bottom with perforations, so very standard. I was irritated because it meant taking it to the bank. Contact HMRC officially.

@tootiredtoocare Lots of banks now allow paying in cheque via their apps - worth checking if yours does.

Just took a look - you can claim online direct from HMRC if you think you're due a rebate. www.gov.uk/tax-overpayments-and-underpayments/if-youre-due-a-refund

This might not be a scam in the way that you think it is - it may be that you are entitled to a tax rebate and this company is acting on your behalf to claim it and cream a generous percentage off for themselves. Which magazine published an investigation earlier this year saying that is becoming more common. I read about it happening to someone else recently and it was because they've previously used a third party organisation to claim a tax rebate or PPI compensation or some other payment. Some of these companies will give you an agreement to sign called a deed of assignment which allows them to act on your behalf in financial matter indefinitely. This might have been a few lines in a terms or conditions that would be easy to overlook unless you read things very carefully. Once they have a deed of assignment these companies go around looking for tax rebates etc that you are entitled to and will then take a cut of anything they manage to claim on your behalf. Unfortunately in the case I read about the person was finding it very difficult to get the company to stop. HMRC claimed they were unable to stop taking instructions from the company because of the mandate that had been signed. You need to find out from HMRC if there is a deed of assignment on your account. If they won't tell you this via customer services you can do a subject access request to find out what information they hold on you (ico.org.uk/your-data-matters/your-right-to-get-copies-of-your-data/). If there is then you need some decent legal/consumer advice to get them to stop acting on your behalf!

@GruffaIo I said bank but it's actually a building society and they don't. They've not closed any of their branches near us, either, so they do like you to go in, which I quite like, when I want to go there! Just awkward I suppose 😆

This does sound like a high risk of scam.

'We will process your tax refund once you have paid our £18 fee'

Funnily enough the tax refund never materialises.

This is a SCAM or something has been missed out of the orginal post. I was watching a very sad story yesterday on the BBC about a women from the Philippenes who was educated but had lost her husband a few years ago. She was being scammed by someone who was pretending to be someone else and gave away £50k. Her children were trying to warn her but she wasnt listening. They now arent speaking to her. Eventually after being shown lots of proof she accepted it and then at the end of the story she said it was OK as she had an online relationship with someone else. Again massive red flags, new man was unwell, inheirtance tax amounts needed to be transferred to her etc etc.

It was as though she had a blank on all of this. I am not saying that you are the same but sometimes although lots of people are stating that its a scam people just arent listening. I used to work with govenment depts and if HMRC owed you money they certainly wouldnt be outsourcing payment back to you via another party. There would be complete uproar and all over the news if they did that.

I suspect some of this story is missing

This article may provide some useful context to what's happened: www.theguardian.com/money/2022/jan/15/uk-taxpayers-warned-over-high-charges-from-rebate-claims-firms

The letter looks legit to me.

What does it say for your 2018/19 tax year on the gateway?

Was just coming on to say what @Geezabreak82 has said. This has Deed of Assignment written all over it.

Victims are often public sector union members. The unions endorse these cowboys without understanding what they are letting their members sign up for. It used to be that a rebate company just took a cut of a particular rebate they had claimed for you at that time. Deeds of Assignment mean you have unwittingly agreed to any future rebate for whatever reason going via the vulture company.

It’s daylight robbery without the violence.

DH got a tax rebate for the last 7 years worth of teaching subs and used a third party agent.
We got notification from HMRC, but the cheque from the 3rd party,
Obviously he authorised them to act on his behalf

Did you get in touch with Brooksdale initially to see whether you could reclaim overpaid tax? I know I’ve seen adverts on Facebook for companies like that.

We've even had marketing bumph from Unison urging you to 'check if you can reclaim any overpaid tax' - using one of these companies, which I can only presume passes a small kickback to the union when members fill in the form and have a successful claim. Of course, it's designed to make you think that it's your union fighting on your behalf rather than an opportunistic rip-off merchant touting for business. Utter disgrace.

Like with the PPI agents, I'm sure these companies justify their existence by claiming they provide a valuable service that would be highly complicated to do yourself, even though there will be a free, simple step-by-step guide on MSE.

The Google search-stealers who made you think you were applying direct to the government for a passport or driving licence, when in fact they were adding on their generous bunce, copying and pasting your details and then applying 'on your behalf' have now thankfully been clamped down on. I can't really see a difference myself between them and some of these companies who don't make their commission-based 'service' clear and often masquerade as though they are the official body.

Outrageous that unions are promoting these companies @WeBuiltThisBuffetOnSausageRoll (best username ever) and @Paragon86.

OP - where did you get the templates to reclaim your PPI? Are you sure that you submitted them directly to the bank/financial service provider? Can you think of any other service you might have signed up for in recent years that could have linked you to Brooksdale? Sounds like they could be going under a number of different names.

That I'm owed money so that bit is legit

So the HMRC tax portal says you are owed money.

They've written to you saying this will be repaid via Brooksdale.

Brooksdale have contacted you about passing on the money minus an administrative fee so it sounds like they have already been passed the cash by HMRC.

They are definitely interacting with HMRC on your behalf OP. You need to work out where they've got the authority to do so, and get them to stop.

The unions get commission, which is why they promote them. I run a small accountancy practice and have had numerous phone calls on behalf of various unions asking us if we want access to their members to act on their behalf re tax rebate claims etc., in return for a share of our fees. It's an absolute disgrace that unions just randomly phone random accounting firms.

Could it be therefore @drinkingwineoutofamug that the NHS union has done this on your behalf? can you call NHS payroll?

Write to Brookdale saying that you are unclear as to how they gained your details to or how they have gained authority to deal with HMRC to act on your behalf. By this letter you are making clear that they do not have authority to act on your behalf, and if any consent has been implied by them they should now consider that authority rescinded. If they need any further information they should contact you, but otherwise you look forward to hearing from them to confirm your instructions have been carried out. CC this to HMRC with your reference numbers.

Also you might want to consider reporting them to the ICO if you are not clear how they got your consent/authority.

I have had rebates before, and you can choose how HMRC pays you. Never heard of doing this via a third party. I agree - it's a scam.

www.theguardian.com/money/2022/jan/15/uk-taxpayers-warned-over-high-charges-from-rebate-claims-firms

There was an item about this recently on Money Box on radio 4

It’s not as simple as your last paragraph @Geezabreak82 . Even cancelling or changing the agent does not stop the effectiveness of the Deed of Assignment. Years ago an agent would work a claim, take a percentage of it for his labours, and that was the end of it.

I recently saw a case where an agent operating in a niche sector had worked for a large rebate in unusual circumstances. HMRC were then obliged to send the rebate to a Deed of Assignment company, despite holding a more recent form 64-8 from the genuine agent. The “fees and standing costs” deducted by the D of A company were horrendous but legal.

The taxpayer couldn’t understand what had happened. It eventually transpired that a couple of years back he’d signed a form his wife had received via her union offering to check if transfer of marriage allowance was due (obviously not, the wife was working and paying tax!). This meant the D of A company had to do nothing but await any future tax rebates for any reason for that taxpayer or his wife (and thousands of others) dropping into their laps.

They are harvesting taxpayers’ authorities to receive tax rebates on a massive scale. People (average wage PAYE workers) don’t understand what is going on until it’s too late.

Really strange as just logged on to check my emails and there's an email off Brooksdale!
So could be the Rcn selling off my details or whatever.
I'm going to give Brooksdale a call and see what going on