HMRC Tax Dispute - Tax Advice Recommendations

[sunshinecitrus1]

Long story short… I have an ongoing tax dispute with HMRC that stems back from 2019/2020 year. My current employer has been reassuring me that they are sorting this out and here we are two years on, I am still getting updated tax codes letters and as it stands, I apparently owe thousands to HMRC due to errors made by my employer. I have spoken with management at my company numerous times on this since it started and nothing has ever been sorted - I got the whole “HMRC are very slow at responding due to COVID” excuse and I kick myself for allowing them to fob me off for so long now.

I am currently on maternity leave and am considering changing jobs when I return to work. However, as it stands, if I do that in its current state… I am going to end up losing more money out of my monthly wage to pay back tax (that I don’t actually owe) until this gets resolved. My employer are useless to put it bluntly, they are not responsive and when they are, it isn’t helpful. I spoke with Citizens Advice who told me to bypass my company, go through all of my pay slips and contact HMRC directly and advise them what all of the figures SHOULD be. I am doing this so hopefully the response doesn’t take too long.

I am wondering whether or not there is anything else in the meantime I should be doing. I don’t really want to get a tax solicitor involved as of course they are expensive and it makes me furious that I would have to pay money out of my own pocket to resolve this when it is an error made by employer! I would be willing to go down this route if it came to it though.

Has anyone else had any bad experiences with their tax and employers and how did you get it sorted (if you have a useless employer like mine!)??

The thing is that HMRC are pathetically slow at the moment. I'm an accountant and have cases going back 2 or 3 years that are being sat on by HMRC, most of which are very simple/basic. They were a complete shit-down pre covid and have managed to be even worse now, with no signs of any improvements.

You're doing the right thing by getting all your paperwork together, i.e. PAYE code notices, payslips, etc. Work it all out on a spreadsheet to show exactly what is the right position and where the errors are located. Then send copies of it all to HMRC in the post either signed for or special delivery (so proof of postage at least) - (and always keep original documents as HMRC have form for losing things!) with a covering letter explaining what's happened, what's wrong, time line, etc. It'll probably take a few months for them to reply, but at least it's on record.

As an accountant, it's all I'd do if you came to me as a client, i.e. sort out all the paperwork, lay all the facts out and then send it to HMRC, so I don't think you'd benefit from paying for a tax advisor when it's something you can do yourself.

Presumably you've registered for your online tax account, so should be able to see online what information HMRC hold about you, i.e. what your employer has submitted re your wages etc and what other information HMRC think they have, i.e. other income, pension contributions etc.

@user1497207191 Thank you for getting back to me on this. It's nice (or not so nice!) to hear your experience with HMRC. Yes it is a shame everything takes so long with them. As you say, it was bad enough before COVID and now even worse! I posted them a letter back in April 2021 regarding this dispute and I still haven't heard anything back.

I have just spent my evening writing out another letter and printing out all of my back up documents and will post it all out again. I am also going to submit a form via the Government Gateway log-in as it states if you think something is wrong with the details submitted by your employer, you can let them know that way. Ideally though, I would like them to respond to the letter as I will have enclosed all of my back up documents with it (rather than trying to squeeze all of my information into 500 letters on their online portal!).

I think I am right with this but you send your tax disputes to the following address don't you:

Pay As You Earn and Self Assessment
HM Revenue and Customs
BX9 1AS

I think they are about 8m behind in opening post aren't they?
Online stuff is fine, actually talking to them is OK, but postal coms are an utter nightmare.

Good luck OP.

This happened to my husband a few years ago. Useless employer, not deducting correct amount of tax and applied wrong tax code.

He had evidence to support that he'd emailed the employer loads of times to no avail. And he also had evidence of contact with HMRC - emails, phone logs, names of employees from HMRC who took the calls.

So when the letter from HMRC came advising that he owed them money, I wrote (from him, not me) a very robust, strongly worded letter detailing that the fault lay with the employer and HMRC. All of the 'evidence' was provided with the letter of complaint and the outcome was that HMRC wrote off the debt.

I'd definitely recommend complaining.

HMRC have the powers to get the employer to pay the tax if they’ve demonstrably made errors. Write to HMRC asking them to consider Employer Error. More here;
assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/366615/employer-errors-deduction-paye.pdf

@Chasingsquirrels Ooo I didn’t know they were 8 months behind in post. I sent a letter back in April 2021, never heard a thing back so they’re either now a year behind or mine has got lost somewhere!

@Clarice99 Thanks for the advice! It’s good your husband had evidence of everything. I too have kept all correspondence, letters etc. since all of this started. I know this was a few years ago but can I ask how long that process took after you wrote to them?

@GreenClock This is really useful thank you! I have saved this and am going to have a good read on it

They obviously do open the post but must prioritise it. I have to apply for certificates of residence and they always take 12 to 14 weeks. It's absolutely crazy that we can't email and have to use snail mail.

Has anyone actually used the Government Gateway to update HMRC of details? I noticed there is a “check progress” section but wondered whether anyone had any experience of how long it took for a response and whether HMRC actually updated the check progress section?

There are massive delays

Last week I received a letter from HMRC saying 'thank you for your letter dated 01 February 2022 - I am an accountant

I’m now self employed but had issues from two years ago, I had one person phone me three times and we sat down and when through all the figures, he filmed in the forms whilst I was online, I still owe £400 from mess up by employer but it’s a lot lower than previous figures, it was sorted in 3 days, two last week and yesterday. I’d submitted a complaint form on the gateway and he was from that department. I don’t know if I was lucky??

*filled

@FAQs Thanks for this - May be worth me having a shot at this, I may get lucky too! Did you complain using the following link?

www.gov.uk/complain-about-hmrc

Get it in writing that your employer is at fault. Set out all of the details for your employer and get them to confirm that your information is correct and that they accept responsibility.

@sunshinecitrus1 I did, using this one, I hope you’re impressed with my photoshop. 🤣

Trying to sort out a basic issue with HMRC takes months. Since they've got rid of the web chat service things are even worse.

If I was sending anything by post it would be signed for with a tracking number.

@ChateauMargaux I have lots in writing from my employer which I have printed and is part of the documents I am sending to HMRC by post so hopefully that backs things up. It would be great if my employer would try and contact HMRC on my behalf to help speed things along but honestly, so bored of relying on them now.

@FAQs Oh your photoshop is amazing! I love the arrow lol! Thank you, I am going to do this

@userxx I agree, the web chat was pretty useful when I used it before. Shame they haven’t got that for the next few months!

[quote sunshinecitrus1]@ChateauMargaux I have lots in writing from my employer which I have printed and is part of the documents I am sending to HMRC by post so hopefully that backs things up. It would be great if my employer would try and contact HMRC on my behalf to help speed things along but honestly, so bored of relying on them now.

@FAQs Oh your photoshop is amazing! I love the arrow lol! Thank you, I am going to do this

@userxx I agree, the web chat was pretty useful when I used it before. Shame they haven’t got that for the next few months![/quote]
The thing is that your employer will also be struggling to make contact with HMRC and get them to do anything.

The default HMRC response to anything to do with employment is to tell the employer to resend the submissions correctly as they nearly always refuse to make any adjustments manually. Trouble is it's not that easy to simply correct and re-submit - some payroll software doesn't provide for it, some things simply can't be resubmitted, some software won't let you make corrections after submission.

@sunshinecitrus1

Has anyone actually used the Government Gateway to update HMRC of details? I noticed there is a “check progress” section but wondered whether anyone had any experience of how long it took for a response and whether HMRC actually updated the check progress section?

The "check progress" isn't tailored to your issue though. HMRC regularly update average timescales, and that's what the system uses. So if the average time to respond to a letter is 6 months, then their system will give you a date of the date they received it plus 6 months. Could be quicker or slower depending on who it's allocated to and whether they can deal with it themselves or need to pass it to someone else. It's a very blunt instrument. The only real useful aspect is that it's logged your letter or online phone so at least you know they've received it and will look at it eventually.

@sunshinecitrus1

I'm so sorry, I can't remember how long it took to resolve.

I have a feeling the web chat wont be coming back any time soon. Sadly.

@FAQs Hi! I just wanted to let you know that I submitted a complaint as you recommended at the end of March and I received a response from HMRC yesterday. A little bit of a wait but my issue has now been resolved and tax code is now sorted and as it should be so I just wanted to say thank you for the advice! 😁

@sunshinecitrus1 thats great news! No problem I know how stressful it is dealing with them, so pleased it’s sorted 😊