Be Excellent To Each Other

For the first time in my life the Inland Revenue owes me money.

As I file my return on line I was able to choose the repayment option online. However after the requested 48 hour processing period the request hadn't seemed to have any effect. The money is still sitting there. This has happened twice. Having rung my local tax office up they seem to be incredible evasive. Dispite being told on Wednesday that the online system had failed and it had now been put through to processing, I am told today that it isn't being processed. Apparently this is due to my last payment, made via cheque, not yet clearing.

Except I always pay by standing order and last paid three weeks ago. The person refused to enter into any conversation as to how long it would take or what the problem is. No supervisor was available to be spoken to.

This surely isn't right? Is this normal for HMRC when they owe you money?

Yup.

It will get sorted out eventually, rest assured. They're probably suffering the same staff shortage malaise that is afflicting a lot of businesses with this weather and allied to the fact that they're still not running as smoothly as the relevant entities did before the government decided it would make more sense to merge revenue and customs probably explains this.

Hell, they've been insisting for the last three years that I am in actual fact 2 people and it always rears it's ugly head around this time of year, no matter how many times I write or speak to them, so count yourself lucky your biggest problem is not getting the money they owe you as soon as you expected

You think that's bad? Barclays still refer to me as Master. I'm a month shy of twenty-four.

Hang on, that isn't as bad, is it.

If you think that's bad, you should check out the National Insurance guys - they've owed me £42 since August 2007. It's remarkable how tax arrears suddenly isn't such a pressing issue when the shoe is on the other foot.

I'm a tax consultant for companies and we're getting this all the time at the moment. Most likely down to staff cuts, and what they fail to tell you is that even if the system approves the refund, then they still have to get signed off individually by an inspector if they are more than a small amount. At this time of year they are very busy, and certainly in the past it has been the case of there only being 1/2 people per office who can authorise repayments, but if they are off then no-one can act-up in their place.

A few years ago I waited 3 months for a client to get a repayment as there was no-one in that office who could sign the cheque.

So long as your surname isn't Bates. That would be extremely tired by now.

I knew we'd suck him in eventually. Cooee Riles!

Not really, no

That's a joke. How much, incidently, is a "small amount" ?

I rang the revenue today to say "oops didn't do my tax return - sorry about all that - can I send you a payment on account?" expecting a load of grief and the bloke said "Yeah fine - if you get the cheque off soon you'll probably get let off the fine as well."

So HMRC not having enough staff is actually a good thing. Yay.

Is ineptitude and/or lies on their part.

Small amount - varies by office and department. I have another case of waiting 15 months for a repayment but I can't go into details, other than it began with a 2 and had five zeros before the decimal point.

£195 an hour by the way.

Oh it's as small as I can get it without avoidance turning into evasion. What are the revenue charging interest-wise these days by the way?

3.5% since last week- less than the bank charge but they dont pay you interest anymore. Mind you, neither does the bank. And if you havent paid any of last years tax by 28 Feb there is a surcharge on the outstanding amount (Either 5 or 10%)

I hope you got that person's name. What they say and what they do can often be entirely different things.

My personal favourite was HMRC one year refunding my entire tax payment for January (which I'd made a week early, as I typically do to avoid HMRC systems going screwy) and then with the next breath fining me a fairly sizeable sum for non-payment. In the end, my accountant said they were willing to drop the fine "as a gesture of good faith". Gnh.

I work with an ex-inspector of taxes. Your last sentence sums him up maginificently.

The gubmint owed me about £200 from years back. I went through all the hassle of applying for it back,a nd only got back £100. It was a bulletproof case of them taxing me when I owed nothing, but they still screwed me.

So, I simply sighed, shrugged, and quietly left £100 worth of supplemental income keep off the record a few years later. We're even now, so hey ho.

Plus I needed that money for food anyway, so if they'd taxed it I'd have just had to apply for an emergency fund or whatever. But yeah, they are every bit as tossy as you'd expect when you try to reclaim stuff.

I got my refund back with in 40 days.