HMRC - how disorganised are they?

[ChilliChoco]

DH submitted his tax return in January and was told it would take 8 weeks for a cheque for the £800 rebate we were owed. We heard nothing, so in April, he resubmitted it (which may have been a mistake to do). Anyway, still nothing. There is no one to talk to at HMRC on this but if anyone knows, pls let me know who or how.
Has anyone else been in a similar situation - is there light at the end of the tunnel?

Have you phoned them? Or used the web chat or written to them? They are very very slow

The phone lines say the agents won't talk about refund. The chat line is operated by bots.

Have you tried requesting the refund via their online portal to be paid directly to your bank account?
That seems to be a much quicker way to get a refund for overpaid tax - I did that on the 15th of May, and money was in my account this morning.

When did you submit your original return? They were saying that the online way would take longer I think

Online is normally very quick. Got mine about a week after I submitted. Maybe two
weeks but it was very quixk

It’s just as bad trying to pay them a large amount in Inheritance Tax and a smaller but significant sum in Capital Gains. It’s a shambles run by people who know they don’t havre to care because they have all the power and you have none.

Dh did submit it online 😒

I phoned them about a refund in February and they were great, it was with me within 10 days. I was very surprised given the timing. I was on hold for over an hour to get through, but hey ho.

Which number did you use? Need to get DH to call them

0300 200 3300, there was a hellscape of options to go through (press 1 for etc...) but persistence paid off.

My last three tax returns I was owed a small refund. Each year I gave them my bank details. It took a phone all to their helpline before all three years refunds were paid in one lump sum

Mine was because I'd paid tax on the bit of a redundancy payment over the 30k, but not worked in the next year. The lovely bloke calculated it for me on the phone, agreed it was mine, and organised payment. You just need a helpful one, and a metric fuckton of patience when trying to get through! Good luck!

It's a shambles because a lot of people doing the job earn NMW, so recruitment, retention and morale is all dreadful.

Plus they'll be using an IT system designed by private sector contractors out to make as much profit as possible rather than provide a functional, easy to use product.

What @Bjorkdidit said. Plus the government refuse to fund the CS properly to run services. I'm not HMRC, but work on another government service and we're 15% below what we need to run, with demand projected to grow but have been told categorically that there's no money for front-line people as the government want everyone to go online or use a chat bot. But the public want/need to speak to humans so the wait times are horrendous and everything is backed up.

I'm an accountant, we've been waiting over a year for some tax refunds to be paid to clients. They're an absolute shambles. We talk to staff, they promise to do things, but don't, so after waiting several weeks, we have to phone again, same happens, they promise to do something, but don't! I've got about a dozen formal complaints on the go at the moment. One is about a formal complaint which was balls-up by a "senior" tax inspector - she hadn't a bloody clue and wrote back a long letter which was absolute crap, so we had to write back an equally long letter explaining chapter and verse why she was wrong - finally got her reply after several months admitting she was wrong and had "taken additional training". If "senior" inspectors haven't a clue, then no hope for the more junior staff. It's never been the same since Brown's re-organisations.

I knew someone owed £18k that didn’t get it back for 18 months. I waited a year for £900. They’re running a pretty shambolic operation

I submitted DH’s return online on May 1st, his refund was in the bank on the 5th. I’m surprised they even use checks any more.
DH’s business bank account doesn’t accept them.

I phoned them this week (35 mins wait time) to PAY them money and they said I can’t & I need to write in, not email, write a letter. It’s an utter shambles, people are scared of HMRC but honestly they are so understaffed and the system is practically broken. I’m just not going to bother paying them - it’ll take them 10,000 years to realise!!

That is awful

The front line staff are badly paid, morale is poor, and tbh they either get promotions to other HMRC departments, or they leave when something better paid turns up. The complaints department is pretty good - but swamped.

It’s really unfortunate but their telephone support has really decreased in quality in the last 3 years or so. I called them recently and had to explain to the person on the phone why they were completely wrong about something when they are HMRC! I had to open the gov.uk website and read to her the paragraph. Absolute shambles.

Sounds like I got lucky.

I would request it online.

but if he has resubmitted his tax return, that might lead to a delay as they will be checking why an amended return was lodged

Write a letter

My original return was really late! It was only submitted online on the 13th of May…..the amount they refunded was minus the fine for late filing, fair cop to be honest. Once the submission was in, the overpayment amount showed straight away, and I was able to request it be paid back a couple of days later.
Sounds like I was very lucky going by some of the other stories on here.