Wednesday 31 August 2011

Shambles

Shambles
My sympathies to a loyal reader whose company has been trying for 3 years to obtain a CIS refund from HMRC without any success.

I understand that their client submitted the P35 to HMRC some 3 years ago, the HMRC office dealing with it at the time was Liverpool Regian House.

The office closed and the paperwork went to Bootle.

The HMRC staff member who took up the case at Bootle was in fact the same person who handled it at Regian House. However, despite having signed a letter with a Regian House address, she denied ever having dealt with it.

Two further P35's were submitted, in the meantime Bootle closed and the paperwork went on a merry journey to Longbenton.

Various other documents have been requested eg; copy bank statements twice, contractors CIS number, monthly records etc.

As time elapsed, various contractors involved have gone bust.

As things stand now, Longbenton have told my loyal reader's company that HMRC will not issue ANOTHER refund for 2010/11 unless all documents are forwarded. This is of course despite the fact that earlier years have yet to be dealt with.

My loyal reader's company has written to Osborne about this but, oddly enough, have not received a reply.

Tax does have to be taxing.

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6 comments:

  1. This should be simple to deal with unless there is something else at play here.

    The overpayment would be visible on the SA statement, and it appears that something has triggered more checks.

    I do not understand why Liverpool would be investigating this though. CIS investigations are done out of Belfast aren't they?

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  2. It clearly states this was from a P35 and therefore the SA statement is not relevant. It relates to a limited companies request for a refund (done through the companies PAYE record).

    The simple answer to the problem would be to provide the evidence the tax was paid. If that isn't possible perhaps Ken can explain why?

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  3. If I understand Ken's post correctly then this is a fairly common quandry. Here's chain on accountingweb from 2009 on the topic (I'm not sure if the CT issue is relevant here). The chain is actually quite funny - Ken you could have written most of it. Well worth a read. http://www.accountingweb.co.uk/anyanswers/paye-cis-offset

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  4. Just to clarify the last post, as the CT offset point is all over the shop, HMRC's own guidance states that CT offset is allowed. Top of page 10 in the CIS340 booklet http://www.hmrc.gov.uk/forms/cis340.pdf

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  5. Somehow methinks between various moves, HMRC lost the tax information (stored on paper before it was processed? Not clear from the post) and are trying to apply canvas screening to their posterior.

    The CIS team at Newry seem to have a special kind of canvas screening if past dealings with them (as an HMRC staff member trying to do the right thing by a vulnerable customer) are anything to go by. I suggest that a DPA request is made by a director of the corporation involved (if this is indeed a corporation) or in the case of an unincorporated business, the person or nominated partner that has declared such income on an SA/Partnership return in order to get this sorted.

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  6. To the previous poster. It is a limited company. They show on the P35 how much CIS tax they have had deducted from them by people they work for. This is then credited against their PAYE liabilities (from the tax/NI they have taken from their staff). If they have more tax deducted than they owe for their staff they would be due a refund.

    What has probably happened here is that the people they worked for didn't submit their Returns (or didn't show this company as working for them) and so an insufficient amount of tax is credited to the company. The quickest way to deal with it is for the company to show it has paid the tax. Unless they haven't in which case they should as Ken to post about it.

    ReplyDelete