Vocal Voices

They've done it again. Third year in succession.

When they generate a Coding Notice for the "next year", they put in an estimate for savings income. I have no argument with that.

But when we get to "next year" and they start receiving actual interest figures from the bank, building society, whatever, they put those into the calculation - but they forget to take out the estimate!

So my savings income figure is around double what it out to be - and they send me a tax bill!!

Cue 40 minute phone call to them trying to sort it out. More work for them and more angst for me ...

Taking out an estimate when you put actual figures in is elementary. I shouldn't have to tell them how to do their job.

And as a PS - any of you who might have made a PPI claim AND your circumstances are such that you might have a tax refund because the PPI interest had 20% tax deducted at source - if you want that tax refund, you've got to make a written claim using a form R40 which you can download from their website. You'd have thought the banks and building societies would have been reporting the individual PPI claims to the Inland Revenue as a matter of course, but no. The taxman knew nothing about my claim from back in May 2019, so now I've got to do the form .... oh well, keeps me occupied.

Aha, the PPI thing. Ossie, you and I spoke about this so I have downloaded the R40 and its notes. It could be worth the stamp given how much they took off my claim. wish me luck.

As for the rest I just fire off an email and sit back. Sometimes I get a reply and have had things change..... the one thing it does do is to let them know that I am here and I am watching them.

You know, John once phoned them monthly for six months to tell them that he wasn’t paying enough tax after changing his company car* and each time he called he gave the correct details but it took that long for any changes to be made.

Then came a letter saying that he’d paid too much tax so they’d be refunding him £400+. He knew that wasn’t right in light of the car issue so called them again, and they agreed...and said that the refund would be £240 instead, which arrived shortly afterwards.

The next letter that came said that he hadn’t paid enough tax.

* The company car. He opted out of that when tax wise he was paying more than he was benefiting from having the car. He’d always make a point of choosing one that fell within the lowest tax band but still, and he had company car fuel benefit too. In theory it’s nice to have free fuel but by the time he handed back his car he was paying around £220 per month in tax on this but was only spending around £100 on fuel.
As leases have ended, most at the company have opted out.

Yes, interesting about the company car, Jo, not so much over the Inland Revenue continually getting the figures wrong, which I can well believe, but more that over recent years, the Inland Revenue have set out to make what used to be a reasonable perk extremely unattractive. I do not think you would find many accountants recommending it to companies these days ....