panorama TAX under and over payments

A-Vic

so who watched it then?

zara5034

Me! None of it surprised me in the least!

A-Vic

the worrying fact none of it surprised them either

zara5034

I can see where the problem arises from, like they say, with pensions and benefits in kind being far more prevelant today.

A lot of my friends come to me as some sort of Tax oracle (which I am not, lol) and I see the same sort of problems, income from pensions or disability benefits and employment both with the 647L code applied, the trouble is a lot of people don't understand basic taxation, understandably, however I think it should be taught to school leavers as the situation is only going to get worse.

A-Vic

the problem arises tho from within it seems they were warned years ago that the new system they implemented (like a lot of the systems) wasnt tested correctly and allowed to issue codes before it was checked.

I can remember one client receiving 10 codes in one day no wonder confusions happen!

zara5034

Yeah that is nuts, and you're right, there is a big internal problem, and what annoys me is that the staff told them about it but they didn't listen, surprise surprise!!!

God I wouldn't want to work for HMRC in a million years, I imagine it's really stressful being on the end of one of those phone lines!

A-Vic

zara5034 wrote: »

Yeah that is nuts, and you're right, there is a big internal problem, and what annoys me is that the staff told them about it but they didn't listen, surprise surprise!!!

God I wouldn't want to work for HMRC in a million years, I imagine it's really stressful being on the end of one of those phone lines!

lol i loved the shave and shower comment, sometimes i could shower and re-paint the whole house by the time they answer the phones

taskey

i started to watch it, but it got too late for me, hopefully it will be on again.

the bit i did see just showed utter confusion over coding and the fact the staff had told the managers it would not work

jilt

Was interesting to see that they wrote off the tax payable by some of the people featured on the programme, bet it wouldn't happen to me!

Monsoon

There are ways they will write off some of the tax due, usually where HMRC were at fault.

There is a whole forum dedicated to heling those affected
http://www.ukbusinessforums.co.uk/forums/forumdisplay.php?f=122

I didn't see the programme but the whole thing just shows that HMRC aren't fit for purpose...

CJC

Monsoon wrote: »

I didn't see the programme but the whole thing just shows that HMRC aren't fit for purpose...

Which I imagine the budget cuts of 15% that are to be made by 2014/15 and which come on top of the severe cuts and huge staff reductions made by the last government will do little to resolve.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2010/nov/08/businesses-that-dont-like-tax

Monsoon

CJC wrote: »

Which I imagine the budget cuts of 15% that are to be made by 2014/15 and which come on top of the severe cuts and huge staff reductions made by the last government will do little to resolve.

I know. Going to make our job a barrel of laughs!

A-Vic

Monsoon wrote: »

I know. Going to make our job a barrel of laughs!

Although like i said to my boss at least he will be busy trying to put right where they have gone wrong - i know a horrible way of putting it but they are drumming up more business for tax accountants.

GILL

In my experience this is not the only problem they have. Several months ago 3 employees came to me (separatley) as they had received notification that they were changing to really low tax codes.

Why I contacted the tax office because not only were the codes clearly incorrect but I had, luckly, not received notification of the changes a very stressed woman looked into it and admitted that all our employees had been recorded in their new system twice. Once as the correct Ltd company and the second under the 'old' setup before we transferred to a Ltd company! What made it worse was that this was done 8 years ago and 2 of the employees never worked for the 'old' company.