Tax underpayment letter - help !

[rudy691]

my missus got the tax underpayment letter for the year 2007/2008 for the sum of £320. what is going to happen now ? I know these are usually taken of your salary, but my missus doesnt work since last year. we had a baby in Sep 2009, she was on maternity leave but she hasnt come back to work, so she stays st home since then.

 

any help with this ?

[ptol]

In the past, I have been able to agree a repayment plan to pay back tax at the rate of £20 per month for a similar amount of money. Telephone up to make an appointment at the HMRC drop in center, and you should be able to solve that issue there.

 

Note, Do not trust HMRC staff to be honest. deal with them in person, not telephone, write minutes in the meeting, and insist that you both sign and date the minutes and that they keep a copy in their files. In reality the errors are usually due to poor record keeping on their part and lack of staff for workload issues, but I have proved that one staff member routinely lied to cover admin errors, and the HMRC will only correct their mistakes if you have absolute proof. NEVER LET THEM HAVE AN ORIGINAL DOCUMENT. THEY WILL LOOSE IT.

[rudy691]

it doesnt say anything on it about repaying. no payment slips, nothing.

we can't afford it now and I don't really understand why it took them 3 years to sort this out !

[rudy691]

+ how can they send her underpayment letter now, when last year she made a tax return claim and received about 200 quid in overpaid tax !

[rudy691]

anyone ?

[ptol]

In short, they are different calculations, that usually have no bearing on other years and so can be considered in isolation. The reason for the underpayment letter now is that they have done a substantial data correction exercise on their part, and are going back over previous years to correct mistakes. In my case I had over paid by about £90, so I got a cheque this time. However in the past I have not been so lucky...

 

There are some grounds for not having to pay that tax. if the error was the fault of the inland revenue, and you had correctly given them the information is the main one, otherwise they will want paying. They will also charge interest (it used to be around 9% pa)

on the overdue amount.

 

However, they are not like the VAT man or benefits, and so are usually quite amenable to repaying slowly over a long period of time.

[honeybee13]

Hello there. I agree with ptol, go to an HMRC centre. You could also talk to the CAB who are normally pretty good at this sort of stuff.

 

My best, HB

[rudy691]

she received a letter today with the cheque to fill in and we're expected to pay the whole amount by the 16th of March now...we can't afford this as we're in the middle of moving houses now as we've been offered accomodation from the housing association.

 

i dont know what to do with this now...

[rudy691]

I've done some reasearch and will follow advice given here:

 

http://www.litrg.org.uk/News/2011/2007-08-paye-under

 

will see what they will come up with