HMRC - like going back in time 30 years

[GT49er]

I know staff and it's much as said above. The whole eggs are in the 'digital' basket and there will be just a few 'super locations' up North, no more local offices all done on line or on phone. Apparently it's "What the public want", maybe the result of an online survey?

Too many experienced staff have gone, so much so that new, cheaper, staff are taken on and answer your calls, small wonder some knowledge is lacking. Staff are moved off their own roles, like answering post, to tackle phone calls where they may well advise you to write in.

And then they tell me the Performance scheme takes hours as each staff member has to 'self assess' and then there's the 5 days of training they all have to do. Sounds a mess, it is a mess.

Agree with pretty much all of that, except, "Apparently it's "What the public want".





No it isn't. It is, however, Tory logic. When the BBC only shows repeats of 'Murder She Wrote' (probably the cheapest screen filler available!), the Tory government will spin that as. "It's what the public wanted; they didn't like paying TV licences, so we abolished them. What is available now represents good value for money for the BBC and the taxpayer'.

And, of course, wonderful for the proprietors of pay TV, who will rake it in and make generous donations to Tory party funds. Arise, Lord Murdoch.......

 

[Herr Tubthumper]

I know staff and it's much as said above. The whole eggs are in the 'digital' basket and there will be just a few 'super locations' up North, no more local offices all done on line or on phone. Apparently it's "What the public want", maybe the result of an online survey?

Too many experienced staff have gone, so much so that new, cheaper, staff are taken on and answer your calls, small wonder some knowledge is lacking. Staff are moved off their own roles, like answering post, to tackle phone calls where they may well advise you to write in.

And then they tell me the Performance scheme takes hours as each staff member has to 'self assess' and then there's the 5 days of training they all have to do. Sounds a mess, it is a mess.

As an aside, in my 20 years of being self-employed in the UK, HMRC looked at my books just once and even then it was quite casual. Move to Germany and within just over a year of operating they had requested all my paperwork and poured over it for a week.

 

[Dumseagull]

I needed to request an "SA302" form, it's a form to confirm 3 years of earnings, my mortgage adviser needed it.

I was quite shocked you can't click to request online! You have to wait 45 minutes on the phone, when you finally get through its just..... "Can I have an SA302 form sent please?", "Yes sir that's done for you now". Brilliant 45 minutes to ask a 15 second question!

 

[drew]

I needed to request an "SA302" form, it's a form to confirm 3 years of earnings, my mortgage adviser needed it.

I was quite shocked you can't click to request online! You have to wait 45 minutes on the phone, when you finally get through its just..... "Can I have an SA302 form sent please?", "Yes sir that's done for you now". Brilliant 45 minutes to ask a 15 second question!

Agree that there should he an online option as I needed one earlier this year.

 

[drew]

Have to disagree with you there. Recently had dealings with HMRC on behalf of my daughter, who has been given a job 'on a self-employed basis'. It isn't, it's paid employment, but the employer can't be arsed to do the PAYE and wants to dodge employers' contributions to NI.
There is a tool on the website you can use to establish whether it is self-employment or not. I used that to verify my own findings, then phoned HMRC.
The person I spoke to was obviously very annoyed that the phone on his desk had rung and he had to answer it. Not conte3nt with me using the website to establish employment status, I had to go through all the questions again, verbally, with him. At the end, he said, "That's not self employment". I pointed out that I already knew that, and the reason I was phoning was because the employer had told my daughter just to fill out the forms for self employment anyway; everyone else did.
OK, I said, we've established that the employer is in the wrong. What should my daughter do?
"Speak to her employer".
She's done that; he's not budging, so what should she do next?
"Fill in the forms to declare self-employment".
So, the employer's breaking your regulations, what are you going to do about it?
"If we did an inspection and found something amiss we'd take it up with the employer".
So, when are you likely to do an inspection?
"I can't tell you that".
Well, if a breach of the regulations was reported, would you inspect them then?
"It would have to be reported".
I've just done that (details handed over). Now, what are YOU going to do about it?
"I'll pass it on o the relevant section".
And they'll investigate and make an inspection?
"I can't tell you that".

Yep, we certainly get the service the Tories are happy to pay for. I know from sources that billions of unpaid tax are written off each year because there aren't enough resources to chase them up; probably great news for Tories' chums in business and the city. Somebody's breaking the rules? Don't tell us, we're not going to investigate them (unless you're some poor little sole trader struggling to make a living who makes a mistake on his tax returns that we can nail without any fear of a fancy lawyer turning up to give us a hard time).

To be fair to the guy you spoke to, he's hardly like to be able to tell you if a matter like this would be investigated when he isn't in that dept and the likelihood is that that dept have to pick and chose what cases are inspected due to staffing levels. If someone rang you and stated something along the lines of what you said about the employment status, would you send the details off to an investigation dept without checking the facts. Tiresome but necessary.

 

[blue'n'white]

I know staff and it's much as said above. The whole eggs are in the 'digital' basket and there will be just a few 'super locations' up North, no more local offices all done on line or on phone. Apparently it's "What the public want", maybe the result of an online survey?

Too many experienced staff have gone, so much so that new, cheaper, staff are taken on and answer your calls, small wonder some knowledge is lacking. Staff are moved off their own roles, like answering post, to tackle phone calls where they may well advise you to write in.

And then they tell me the Performance scheme takes hours as each staff member has to 'self assess' and then there's the 5 days of training they all have to do. Sounds a mess, it is a mess.

Quite agree with you !

 

[Gazwag]

I needed to request an "SA302" form, it's a form to confirm 3 years of earnings, my mortgage adviser needed it.

I was quite shocked you can't click to request online! You have to wait 45 minutes on the phone, when you finally get through its just..... "Can I have an SA302 form sent please?", "Yes sir that's done for you now". Brilliant 45 minutes to ask a 15 second question!

The problem here is the banks, you can print a SA302 from your online HMRC account and your accountant, if you have one, can print a SA302 from the commercial software they use - HOWEVER the banks will only accept one which is on HMRC paperwork.

If you have an accountant they can request one in a matter of minutes using the HMRC agent phone line, however it may of course cost you a few pounds (if the accountant put anytime down to it of course) so you have to assess whether you want to pay your accountant, and have 45 minutes of time where you can be earning money or BT.

 

[One Love]

There is a tool on the website you can use to establish whether it is self-employment or not.

That tool is a complete waste of time designed to get as many people as possible away from self employment and into the PAYE system where they want them.

I doubt anyone ever gets the decision that they should be self employed.

 

[GT49er]

To be fair to the guy you spoke to, he's hardly like to be able to tell you if a matter like this would be investigated when he isn't in that dept and the likelihood is that that dept have to pick and chose what cases are inspected due to staffing levels. If someone rang you and stated something along the lines of what you said about the employment status, would you send the details off to an investigation dept without checking the facts. Tiresome but necessary.

Fair point - but looking back, my original post contained an inaccuracy. What he actually said was not, "I can't tell you that" - it was, "I'm not allowed to tell you that". A contact in HMRC tells me that in all likelihood they won't do anything about it due to not having enough manpower to check that their regulations are being observed.
That's why they actively encourage people in 'self-employed basis' to falsely declare themselves self employed. It saves them a job.

 

[GT49er]

That tool is a complete waste of time designed to get as many people as possible away from self employment and into the PAYE system where they want them.

I doubt anyone ever gets the decision that they should be self employed.

On the contrary, the tool itself works quite well. It's just that HMRC prefer to tell employees who are clearly not self-employed top wrongly declare themselves as self-employed anyway. This saves HMRC the time and effort of chasing up and taking action against cheating employers who are dodging NI contributions and saving themselves the bother of setting up PAYE. It also makes zero hours contracts easier to conceal.

 

[beefypigeon]

I get those too telling me they owe me 100k tax refund and they just need my bank account number to transfer the money into! Do you think I should respond?

Thanks for the insight, it was actually to the tune of roughly £100 and looked very authentic, styled in HMRC branding and from a .gov email address. Yours sounds pretty genuine though, may be worth a punt?

Hover your cursor over the email address so you can see what it is.....it'll be dodgy.

That was my initial thought, but it was a .gov email address and looked very genuine, hence why I called them.

The do send some stuff by email - I think you have to opt in for it though.
The emails just say you need to go on the Gov Gateway site and do something (pay them money usually ).

Whilst on hold for a couple of minutes (with estimated wait time of 35 minutes apparently), one of the automated messages mentions that HMRC never send email correspondence, always via phone or post. But I think you're right in that some instances following a phone call they may send you something via email.

 

[NooBHA]

On the contrary, the tool itself works quite well. It's just that HMRC prefer to tell employees who are clearly not self-employed top wrongly declare themselves as self-employed anyway. This saves HMRC the time and effort of chasing up and taking action against cheating employers who are dodging NI contributions and saving themselves the bother of setting up PAYE. It also makes zero hours contracts easier to conceal.

There are test to differentiate between self employment and employment status.

The strongest rule for determining this is whether or not there is a master/servant type relationship between the Contractor/Contracted - Employer/Employees. That is to say. If the one paying the remuneration dictates, the hours and location then HMRC will generally try to argue that it is should be a PAYE situation but this is one of the ''greyest'' areas with the tax system.

 

[NooBHA]

Believe me, HMRC do not use the word 'fiscal' re personal tax - unlike the Chancellor who uses it all the time.

This is the same Chancellor who said Tax Returns would be abolished "in this parliament", I.e by 2020/21. He'll no doubt say he's taken some people out of Self- Assessment but this is due to changes he's made to tax rather than changes to the IT / software / procedures. He has no idea how poorly integrated the software is across HMRC.

I passed my Accountancy and Tax Law exams internally at HMRC and the word ''fiscal'' is extremely prominent withing the curriculum. It has to be because a ''Fiscal Year End'' often differs from an ''Accounting Year End'' within personal tax for self employed people. It differs for Corporation Tax because there is no Fiscal year End. Only Accounting year ends

 

[Easy 10]

I had to ask for a Certificate of Residency to prove that the company I work for is tax registered in the UK (for an overseas client). After half an hour waiting on the phone, I was told I had to write to the relevant tax office and they will post one to me, and no, they won't accept the request via email.

About three weeks go by and there's no sign of the certificate. So I phone them again, hang around for I don't even know how long, just to be told that they had no record of my letter. So with a sigh and a slump of the shoulders, I wrote again and sent it registered post. Another few weeks passed, I phone again to be told they are working through a large backlog. Eventually, well over 2 months after the initial request, the certificate arrived. Delayed us getting paid by nigh on 3 months, but that's the archaic 1974-style HMRC we are stuck with I suppose.

Shithouse.

 

[Pavilionaire]

I passed my Accountancy and Tax Law exams internally at HMRC and the word ''fiscal'' is extremely prominent withing the curriculum. It has to be because a ''Fiscal Year End'' often differs from an ''Accounting Year End'' within personal tax for self employed people. It differs for Corporation Tax because there is no Fiscal year End. Only Accounting year ends

I've got a practising certificate and been filing Tax Returns for 18 years. Client s have emailed me with these scammer emails for probably the last 12 years and they always have the word 'fiscal' in them. This is because they originated in the States where the IRS refer to the fiscal year.

I'm not saying HMRC doesn't use the word internally, I'm saying HMRC never emails people re personal tax and tells them they have a refund for a fiscal year.

 

[NooBHA]

I've got a practising certificate and been filing Tax Returns for 18 years. Client s have emailed me with these scammer emails for probably the last 12 years and they always have the word 'fiscal' in them. This is because they originated in the States where the IRS refer to the fiscal year.

I'm not saying HMRC doesn't use the word internally, I'm saying HMRC never emails people re personal tax and tells them they have a refund for a fiscal year.

I did agree with that in my original reply to your post that it was a scam and i think my original response did ONLY say that it was not strictly true that they never use that

 

[Pavilionaire]

I'm just completing a Tax Return for a pensioner client and - for yet another year - RBS have given her a second Personal Allowance. HMRC issue a correct Basic Rate PAYE code to RBS but for whatever reason they don't apply it.

For two years in a row I called HMRC to tell them their code wasn't being implemented and so they were being underpaid c. £2,000 tax. They said they had no way of talking to RBS to sort it out, but that they could resend the code list to them. This has been happening for 10 years now, my client is in Self-Assessment and has to pay £2K each year because of the systemic RBS cock-up.

Yet RBS are telling HMRC every month under Real Time Information what code is being applied and still they do nothing. One NI number, two Personal Allowances. Systemic failure. And there are many other examples I have.

 

[NooBHA]

I'm just completing a Tax Return for a pensioner client and - for yet another year - RBS have given her a second Personal Allowance. HMRC issue a correct Basic Rate PAYE code to RBS but for whatever reason they don't apply it.

For two years in a row I called HMRC to tell them their code wasn't being implemented and so they were being underpaid c. £2,000 tax. They said they had no way of talking to RBS to sort it out, but that they could resend the code list to them. This has been happening for 10 years now, my client is in Self-Assessment and has to pay £2K each year because of the systemic RBS cock-up.

Yet RBS are telling HMRC every month under Real Time Information what code is being applied and still they do nothing. One NI number, two Personal Allowances. Systemic failure. And there are many other examples I have.

You can ask them to raise a Reg 29 or Reg 49 ( I think it is) on RBS for their persistent failure to implement tax codings and collect tax correctly). It is quite difficult to get that through but I got it done once where HMRC wrote off 3 years liabilities, although they did not hold the pension payer responsible. HMRC also paid all unnecessary Accountancy fees.

Things like this you really need to be up for the fight because they are difficult to win