Can anyone give me advice on an HMRC issue?

[sallymetharry]

Hi - I'm wondering if anyone here can give me a quick steer on this. HMRC say I owe them £3.5k for late filing of self-assessment forms. I stopped filling them in a few years ago because I was no longer self-employed, and paid all of my tax through PAYE. It seems I was supposed to fill a form in that let them know I was no longer self-employed, but I didn't do that. I did fill it in 6 months ago now (letting them know I stopped being self-employed 5 years ago) but they are still sending me letters saying I owe them the money for late filing. I tried to get through to them on the phone to speak to them about it, but couldn't.

My question is this - is it worth me paying an accountant to try and sort it out for me? Or am I bang to rights and do I have to just pay them because I should have filled the form in 5 years ago? Does anyone know?

Huge thanks for any help anyone can give.

How many years ago did you stop filing? Why haven't they contacted you sooner? They contacted me the first year and I told them I was no longer self employed it was a bit fiddly but they accepted it eventually

You should have told them at the time, but it's very amiss of them to not communicate with you for five years about it. They should have written to you when they first started to apply penalties.

Maybe try and appeal some of the fines and penalties on those grounds, unless you've been negligent, eg you've moved house without telling them and they have been writing to you and it's taken them this long to track you down. In that case, it might be worth taking advice from an accountant or tax lawyer to see if it's worth appealing or if you're going to just have to take it on the chin and pay up?

You can try but it’s not just SE people who have to fill in the forms. Generally if you do it once you just keep doing it until they tell you you can stop

So you have been getting notices to file for the last few years, plus reminders, plus penalty notices but you ignored all these and let fines build up? Silly, but not the worst I've seen.
Phone HMRC, you will have to be patient it takes forever to get through. Ask for them to withdraw the returns on the basis no return was required. 90% of the time they'll agree to this. But will depend on why you were required to submit a return in the first place, it can be trickier if it was due to self employment.
Good luck.