HMRC, as from 17 February, will begin sending out penalty notices to all taxpayers who failed to file their 2010/11 returns by the 31 January deadline.
However, HMRC have slightly softened their earlier stance on fining people £100 for failure to send in a self assessment on time (even if they owe no tax). HMRC now states that outstanding returns and associated penalties, where taxpayers call HMRC and explain that they do not need to be in the self assessment (SA) system, may be cancelled.
HMRC will be sending a flyer with the penalty notice, inviting taxpayers to phone the general SA helpline number if they think they don’t need to be in SA.
The change of stance by HMRC was communicated to the ICAEW:
"For information - from 17 February, all customers who failed to file their 2010/11 return online by the deadline will receive a flyer with their penalty notice inviting them to phone us on the general SA helpline number if they think they don’t need to be in SA. A copy of the flyer is attached.
Our contact centre staff will ask them some questions and if we decide we don’t need the return back we will advise the customer that we will cancel the return and remove the penalty.
This additional step has been introduced to mitigate the impact of the new penalty regime, such as by ensuring customers who have to pay penalties are people we need to be in SA whilst others are taken out.
Obviously we hope that customers dealt with in Personal Tax International will call our dedicated helpline number. We will also 'cancel' their return and penalty if it becomes clear that they should no longer be within the SA system.
If any of our PT International customers do contact the 0845 Helpline we will receive notification and make a decision as to whether they should complete the SA return or not. We will write to these customers."
Tax does have to be taxing.
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"where taxpayers call HMRC and explain that they do not need to be in the self assessment (SA) system, may be cancelled".
ReplyDeleteBut HMRC have the worst record for answering calls so the Penalty will remain :)
thats news to me and I work on the SA helpline!
ReplyDeleteSince HMRC treat the 'No SA criteria' worklist item as a low priority (or a manager justs deletes thousands to improve stats), there are probably tens of thousands of people who are sent ITRs that shouldn't have been in the first case.
ReplyDeleteThis comment has been removed by a blog administrator.
ReplyDeleteexactly;- the onus should be on HMRC to use what information it has to ensure that only those meeting the SA criteria are included in the regime
ReplyDeleteIf that's the case then surely the exact opposite is also true?
In other words... if HMRC doesn't have any information to ensure only those meeting the SA criteria are included in the regime (because the person not meeting the SA criteria has failed to provide HMRC with that information), then how can HMRC be expected to act on information they don't have?
The people who seem to expect that HMRC has information that it doesn't have are just wishing themselves in to a police state wit their 'surely you should know' type arguments.
The next answer will be that HMRC should just assume that not being provided with any information by a taxpayer means that there's no tax to pay,
DeleteSo, if by your logic HMRC are allowed to assume that, then again the opposite is also true, so if the last bit of information you provided HMRC was that you had some kind of taxable income, HMRC will continue to assume that.