The Government has been stealing money from my poor mother

[suburbanjellybrain]

... I am fuming and shocked at the moment as have been spending last few days looking at my mums finances - and have discovered a huuuge discrepancy. I always knew mum had a tiny income, a small pension from my father and a small income from child care work but until she came to stay I hadn't looked in detail. I noticed that she was paying over 38% in tax on the pension and 22% on the earn ings- way over what I would expect and after speaking to HMRC for 10 minutes on phone it looks like she could be owed thousands in tax over the last 6 years!!! Which is a life changing amount for her - but it makes me so angry that people on big incomes can afford to pay accounts to avoid taxation while my mum is screwed - I also feel guilty for not noticing before but now we have a lot of forms to fill in...

CHECK YOUR TAXES EVERYONE!!!!

Your poor mum.. will she definitely be paid back the tax, i hope??

Thank you french connection - I think she will - I have downloaded a lot of forms and will be spending time going through them all with her then checking we have completed them correctly with the CAB. Though I haven't got a huge amount of confidence in them tbh ... an adviser looked at this issue years ago apparently yet nothing was resolved.

fwiw I do think she will be able to make good use of the cash now - but there has been many hard times for her since dad died and this loss of her income over the years has made it more difficult than it should have been.

use this link to see if you have a rebate due!!!

You don't actually need to fill in any forms unless your mum is self employed. All you need is your mum's P60s from pension and earnings for each year (originals) and to set out in a letter what she has done/ earned each year, quoting her national insurance number (and her DOB is she is over 65). If she has paid tax on savings send those statements too- they can be copies. Send it to the tax office that deals with her main source of income (it'll tell you on the P60).

Thanks Tallulah - The pensions team at the hmrc said I should complete the forms as the problem is with an overestimation (they tripled it!)of her widows benefit from the DWP by the hmrc meaning her occ. pension is over taxed.

the axctual forms only require a couple of boxes to be filled out and no docs are required so we may as well stick to the plan and see how it goes.