Multiple UTRs???

JodieR

I've just had a client on the phone who's done some subcontract work for the first time in a long time and the contractor has been having problems varifying him for CIS purposes. So after being passed between various HMRC departments it turns out that the problem is that my client has somehow managed to get himself another UTR! When I logged into my HMRC client list sure enough there he was, twice, with 2 completely different numbers.
Apparently now I've got to write to his tax office and explain the situation to get it resolved, but I was wondering if anyone else has come accross it or knows why this might have happened?

:huh:

deanshepherd

Happened once to me before..

..reason?

Well, ours is not to reason why..

blobbyh

I had a similar situation a few months ago when we sold our subsidiary company.

When they wanted to do subcontract work for us, I advised the new owners to register for the CIS scheme. All went quiet for many few weeks until they turned up with threatening letters from HMRC over non-payment of PAYE. I phoned HMRC to query it and was told the company had in fact never paid any PAYE since it began which I knew couldn't be true. It was only when I dug out old records from when we owned the company that I saw they had different accounts office codes etc. Turns out that when registering for CIS, they'd somehow mistakenly registered as a completely brand new company (rather than an existing one) and were assigned new PAYE codes, payment books, the whole works! I can easily imagine a scenario where a simple yes/no question was misunderstood by the owners that led to this situation which is what your subbie could also have done Jodie. He may have confused the new CIS scheme with having to register as a brand new subbie rather than his old UTR being continuous - especially if he didn't do the registration process himself the first time.

Like your situation, HMRC will only accept letters from official people, in this case our shared external accountants which must have cost our former company a few bob for their unfortunate error!

red_devil

Multiple UTRs......I'm sure there are more enjoyable "multiples" than that!

T.C.

Two UTRs

I have a client with two UTRs. One was his original UTR number prior to a bankrupcy and the other his post-bankrupcy UTR. It took quite a lot of digging to find the reason behind the two, but now we just use the post-bankrupcy number.

whiterose

Two UTRs

Had the same situation - one UTR pre-bankruptcy and another one afterwards. Had to split the PAYE year end submission, which was fun! Then client got sent a complete batch of blank SA Rtns from 2001 to fill in...however, after some correspondence it was straightened out.

JodieR

thanks for the replies - both the 're-registering for CIS' and bankruptcy explanations are plausible - I'll do a bit more investigating.

thanks